Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Assortment Selection under the Nested Logit Models

We study a stylized dynamic assortment planning problem during a selling season of finite length $T$, by considering a nested multinomial logit model with $M$ nests and $N$ items per nest. Our policy simultaneously learns customers' choice behavior and makes dynamic decisions on assortments based on the current knowledge. It achieves the regret at the order of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{MNT}+MN^2)$, where $M$ is the number of nests and $N$ is the number of products in each nest. We further provide a lower bound result of $\Omega(\sqrt{MT})$, which shows the optimality of the upper bound when $T>M$ and $N$ is small. However, the $N^2$ term in the upper bound is not ideal for applications where $N$ is large as compared to $T$. To address this issue, we further generalize our first policy by introducing a discretization technique, which leads to a regret of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{M}T^{2/3}+MNT^{1/3})$ with a specific choice of discretization granularity. It improves the previous regret bound whenever $N>T^{1/3}$. We provide numerical results to demonstrate the empirical performance of both proposed policies.
Gender Differences in the Professional and Personal Lives of Plastic Surgeons

Background: Although the number of women becoming plastic surgeons has increased during the past six decades, in comparison with the current gender parity in medical schools, plastic surgery still attracts disproportionately more men. Previous studies have shown disparities in the professional and personal lives of female and male plastic surgeons. A survey study was conducted to identify current challenges women and men encounter in the pursuit of a plastic surgical career to guide remedial strategies. Methods: An anonymous electronic survey was distributed to American Society of Plastic Surgeons members and candidates for comparison between sexes. Differences were tested by the Fisher’s exact and chi-square tests. Results: Women were more likely than men to have experienced sexism or bias. Women were less likely to be married; be satisfied with work-life balance; or feel recognized for ideas, authorship, promotions, or raises. Women felt that their sex was a disadvantage in career advancement, with one exception: unlike men, women felt many patients chose them because of their sex. Despite these challenges, over 80 percent of all plastic surgeons were satisfied with their choice of career. Conclusions: Traditions and gender bias create disparities in the personal and professional lives of female and male plastic surgeons. Our specialty must make concrete changes to promote all plastic surgeons, both women and men, to thrive personally and professionally.
Learning Visually-Grounded Semantics from Contrastive Adversarial Samples

We study the problem of grounding distributional representations of texts on the visual domain, namely visual-semantic embeddings (VSE for short). Begin with an insightful adversarial attack on VSE embeddings, we show the limitation of current frameworks and image-text datasets (e.g., MS-COCO) both quantitatively and qualitatively. The large gap between the number of possible constitutions of real-world semantics and the size of parallel data, to a large extent, restricts the model to establish a strong link between textual semantics and visual concepts. We alleviate this problem by augmenting the MS-COCO image captioning datasets with textual contrastive adversarial samples. These samples are synthesized using language priors of human and the WordNet knowledge base, and enforce the model to ground learned embeddings to concrete concepts within the image. This simple but powerful technique brings a noticeable improvement over the baselines on a diverse set of downstream tasks, in addition to defending known-type adversarial attacks. Codes are available at https://github.com/ExplorerFreda/VSE-C.
The Electrical Stimulation of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis Causes Oxidative Stress in Skeletal Muscle of Rats

Recent studies indicate that activation of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (HPA) plays the crucial role in stress response, while several lines of evidence mark the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) as a major mediator of the HPA axis responses to stress. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the corticosterone flux induced by the electrical stimulation of BST on markers of free radical damage of lipids and proteins and antioxidant enzyme activity in skeletal muscle of rats. The male Wistar rats were used and assigned to one of three groups: sham-operated (SHM; n = 6), two-week (ST2; n = 6), and four-week stimulated (ST4; n = 5) groups. Blood, soleus, and extensor digitorum longus muscles were collected. The chronic, 4-week electrical stimulation of the BST evokes increased plasma corticosterone concentration, which resulted in oxidative stress in skeletal muscles. We found higher level of lipid peroxidation markers, lower level of protein oxidation marker, and elevated antioxidant enzyme activity in both muscles. Our findings have also potential implication showing that reaction to the long-term “psychological stress” may lead to free radical damage of muscle.
Galactose-induced Aging Model in Rat Testicular Tissue.

OBJECTIVE To examine whether the D-galactose induced aging model is an appropriate model for further aging research. STUDY DESIGN Experimental study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY Aziz Sancar Institute of Experimental Medicine, Istanbul University, Turkey, June 2015- June 2017. METHODOLOGY The study comprises 3 groups of rats. Group I is young control (YC) 5-month-old rats. Group II is 5-month- old rats, which were mimetically aged (MA) for 6 weeks via intraperitoneal D-galactose (60 mg/kg body weight/day, 0.5 mL) administration. Group III is naturally aged (NA) 24-month-old rats. Group I and III received intraperitoneal saline (0.9% 0.5 mL) for 6 weeks as vehicle. Group I and Group II received injections at 21 weeks age and Group III rats 6 weeks before 24 months age. Tissues were harvested when rats became 6.5-month-old (Group I and Group II) and 24-month-old (Group III). Quantitative biochemical analyses of proteins, lipids, DNA biomarkers and Cu, Zn-SOD were conducted. Statistical analysis of the data was conducted using ANOVA, followed by post-hoc Bonferroni test. RESULTS Higher magnitude of oxidative damage and diminished antioxidant defence capacity were found in both mimetically aged and naturally aged testicular tissues. It is observed that D-galactose aging model group shares significant similarities in terms of impaired redox homeostasis with the naturally aged rats. CONCLUSION D-galactose induced testicular aging model successfully mimics aging process. Therefore, D-galactose induced aging model may be used as an accelerated aging model to study the age related alterations and interventions.
The role of communities in sustainable land and forest management: The case of Nyanga, Zvimba and Guruve districts of Zimbabwe

Forest benefit analysis is vital in ensuring sustainable community-based natural resources management. Forest depletion and degradation are key issues in rural Zimbabwe and strategies to enhance sustainable forest management are continually sought. This study was carried out to assess the impact of forests on communities from Nyanga, Guruve and Zvimba districts of Zimbabwe. It is based on a Big Lottery Fund project implemented by Progressio-UK and Environment Africa. It focuses on identifying replicable community forest and land management strategies and the level of benefits accruing to the community. Analysis of change was based on the Income and Food Security and Forest benefits, which also constitutes the tools used during the research. The study confirms the high rate of deforestation and the increased realisation by communities to initiate practical measures aimed at protecting and sustaining forest and land resources from which they derive economic and social benefits. The results highlight the value of community structures (Farmer Field Schools and Environmental Action Groups) as conduits for natural resource management. The interconnectivity among forests, agricultural systems and the integral role of people are recognised as key to climate change adaptation.
Application of site-specific hazard assessment testing to solid wastes

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) proposes to use a leaching test as one of the criteria for estimating the environmental hazard of on-land disposal of hazardous wastes. There are many significant technical problems with the specific protocols proposed for use, such as not specifying a defined redox condition under which the tests are to be conducted. The most significant deficiency is in the proposed method for interpretation of leaching test results. The use of these tests as currently formulated could readily result in chemicals that present minimal risk to the environment and human health, being classified as hazardous. More importantly, their use could cause truly hazardous wastes to be classified as acceptable for on-land disposal with minimum restrictions. Adopting the U.S. EPA's proposed approach will result in unnecessarily large amounts of money being spent for control of "hazardous" chemicals and, in some cases, without providing adequate environmental or human health protection. This paper reviews some of the problems associated with the use of the U.S. EPA Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) leaching test for classifying the hazardous nature of chemicals destined for land disposal. Recommendations are made for modification of the RCRA leaching test, to provide for a site-specific evaluation procedure to more properly evaluate the potential hazard associated with on-land disposal of hazardous wastes. An approach is discussed which combines environmental physics (transport and mixing), chemistry-fate, and biology (toxicology, bioconcentration) information. This approach is presented as a basis for interpretation of the results of the leaching tests in terms of the hazard associated with the disposal of a particular waste at a particular site. This "hazard assessment approach," which has been adapted for application to solid wastes by the authors, is a sequential, selective testing-interpretation scheme for combining information on environmental physics (transport and mixing), chemistry-fate, and biology (toxicology and bioconcentration) of a waste and disposal site to determine potential environmental hazard.
Longitudinal white matter microstructural change in Parkinson's disease

Postmortem studies of Parkinson's disease (PD) suggest that Lewy body pathology accumulates in a predictable topographical sequence, beginning in the olfactory bulb, followed by caudal brainstem, substantia nigra, limbic cortex, and neocortex. Diffusion‐weighted imaging (DWI) is sensitive, if not specific, to early disease‐related white matter (WM) change in a variety of traumatic and degenerative brain diseases. Although numerous cross‐sectional studies have reported DWI differences in cerebral WM in PD, only a few longitudinal studies have investigated whether DWI change exceeds that of normal aging or coincides with regional Lewy body accumulation. This study mapped regional differences in the rate of DWI‐based microstructural change between 29 PD patients and 43 age‐matched controls over 18 months. Iterative within‐ and between‐subject tensor‐based registration was completed on motion‐ and eddy current‐corrected DWI images, then baseline versus follow‐up difference maps of fractional anisotropy, mean, radial, and axial diffusivity were analyzed in the Biological Parametric Mapping toolbox for MATLAB. This analysis showed that PD patients had a greater decline in WM integrity in the rostral brainstem, caudal subcortical WM, and cerebellar peduncles, compared with controls. In addition, patients with unilateral clinical signs at baseline experienced a greater rate of WM change over the 18‐month study than patients with bilateral signs. These findings suggest that rate of WM microstructural change in PD exceeds that of normal aging and is maximal during early stage disease. In addition, the neuroanatomic locations (rostral brainstem and subcortical WM) of accelerated WM change fit with current theories of topographic disease progression.
Who Cares? Effects of Social Approach and Avoidance Motivation on Responsiveness to Others

Responsiveness to others (i.e., our understanding, validation, and support of important aspects of others) significantly contributes to positive social relationships. In the present research, we found evidence that responsiveness has motivational origins. In two experiments, participants who were approaching positive social outcomes had a higher level of responsiveness compared with participants who were avoiding negative social outcomes. A third experiment disentangled the roles of motivation and situation valence. Positive (compared with negative) social situations were associated with higher approach motivation, lower avoidance motivation, and a higher level of responsiveness. However, within a given situation, both approach and avoidance motivation were associated with a higher level of responsiveness. This association was even stronger in negative situations, suggesting that both approach and avoidance motivation might be ways of behaving responsively in potentially difficult social situations. The effects were independent of relationship closeness and partly weaker in older compared with younger adults.
Comparison of Methods Analyzing Bifurcation and Hunting of Complex Rail Vehicle Models

The stability assessment is an important task in the mechanical design of railway vehicles. For a detailed model of a railway passenger coach, the hunting behavior depending on the running speed, on wheel-rail contact conditions, and on different model configurations is analyzed using two different methods: The path-following method based on a direct computation of limit cycles enables an automatic computation. However, due to the direct computation, which exploits the periodicity of the solution, this method is restricted to strictly periodic behavior. In the brute-force method, an initial disturbance limited to a certain time interval is applied to the model. This method allows the analysis of the behavior independently from the type of the solution, but requires manual intervention. The comparison of the results obtained with both methods shows a good agreement and thereby the reliability of the results and the methods.
Determination of 48 pesticides in water by using DI-SPME coupled to GC / MS Jabali

This paper discusses the optimization and validation of a complete and simple method for the simultaneous determination of 48 pesticides in water by combining direct immersion solid-phase micro-extraction (DI-SPME) and gas chromatographyion trap tandem mass spectrometry (GC-ITMS/MS). For the extraction, the different SPME parameters were tested and optimized. As a result, the polyacrilate fiber (PA 85μm) was selected in direct immersion mode; the extraction temperature was set to 60oC with an extraction time of 45 min and a stirring speed of 250 rpm; the thermal desorption time of the fiber in the injector port was fixed to 10 min, at 275oC. Concerning the analysis, MS/MS parameters were optimized and figures of merit were compared. Later, the method was validated and showed good linearity in the concentration ranging from 0.05 to 100 ng mL-1. The reproducibility of measurements expressed as relative standard deviation (% RSD) was found to be satisfactory. Furthermore, the detection limits obtained were in the low or sub ppt levels. Finally, the proposed DI-SPME-GCITMS/MS method was tested successfully for water samples collected along the watershed of Abou Ali River (North Lebanon).
Introduction : themes and context [ A ]

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Consumer Brand Choice: Money Allocation as a Function of Brand Reinforcing Attributes

Previous applications of the matching law to the analysis of consumer brand choice have shown that the amount of money spent purchasing a favorite brand tends to match the quantity bought of the favorite brand divided by the quantity bought of all other brands. Although these results suggest matching between spending and purchased quantity, branded goods differ qualitatively among themselves, rendering previous matching analyses incomplete. Consumer panel data containing information about more than 1,500 British consumers purchasing four grocery product categories (baked beans, biscuits, fruit juice, and yellow fats) during 52 weeks were analyzed. All the brands purchased were classified according to the level of informational and utilitarian reinforcement they were programmed to offer. An adaptation of the generalized matching law was adopted, in which the amount of money spent was a power function of the quantity bought, informational level of the brand bought, utilitarian level of the brand bought, and a measure of price promotion.
Ventricular Septal Rupture – A Critical Condition as a Complication of Acute Myocardial Infarction

Abstract Ventricular septal rupture is a potentially fatal complication of acute myocardial infarction. The key to management of this critical condition is an aggressive approach to haemodynamic stabilization and surgical closure of the rupture. Where there is a small rupture and the patient is in a haemodynamically stable condition, surgery can be delayed with the prospect of achieving better perioperative results. However, in unstable critically ill patients either immediate surgery or extracorporeal membranous oxygenation support and delayed surgery is indicated. In some patients, trans-catheter closure may be considered as an alternative to surgery.
When People Co-occur With Good or Bad Events: Graded Effects of Relational Qualifiers on Evaluative Conditioning

Studies on evaluative conditioning show that a change in liking can occur whenever stimuli are paired. Such instances of attitude change are known to depend on the type of relation established between stimuli (e.g., “Bob is a friend of Mike” vs. “Bob is an enemy of Mike”). Research has so far only compared assimilative and contrastive relational qualifiers (e.g., friend vs. enemy). For the first time, we compared the effect of nonoppositional qualifiers on attitude change in an evaluative conditioning procedure (e.g., “Bob causes Positive Outcomes” vs. “Bob predicts Positive Outcomes”). Differential effects of nonoppositional relational qualifiers were observed on explicit and implicit evaluations. We discuss the implications of our findings for attitude research, theories of attitude change, and optimizing evaluative conditioning for changing attitudes in applied settings.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Angels and demons : The effect of ethical leadership on Machiavellian employees ' work behaviors

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Clinical presentation, imaging, pathological profile and management of benign breast conditions based on aberrations of normal development and involution classification: A prospective cohort study

Aim: To map the spectrum of benign breast disorders in patients with reference to ANDI, attempt a clinicopathological and imaging correlation, and evaluate the impact of this concept on the choice of treatments and their outcome. Material and Methods: This prospective study was carried out in the Department of Surgery at tertiary care hospital in central India. A total of 176 consecutive female patients who have attended menarche and presenting with benign breast conditions classified under ANDI classificationattending the surgery department From November 2012 to November 2014 for benign breast conditions were enrolled in the study. Patient parameters were recorded on a predesigned case record form. After clinical assessment, imaging and pathologic evaluation was done as indicated. Results: The mean age of presentation was 26.708. 86 years. Most of patients presented with a commonest complaint of lump in the breast (89.2%). History of painless lump & lumpiness/nodularity was found in 99 cases. The maximum number of patients i.e. 114 (64.8%) presented within first 12 months of appearance of lump. Right breast was commonly involved i.e. in 72cases (40.90%). Mastalgia was not a predominant symptom in patients with benign breast conditions. Consistency in majority of cases was firm i.e. in 162 (92%) cases. Maximum number of breast lumps was located in the upper outer quadrant of breast i.e. 60(34.1%). Nodularity was not seen in 78% cases. Maximum no. of cases had discrete lump on presentation i.e.72%. There was no tenderness in 74% cases. 68% of patient had fibroadenoma. Most common age group was 21-30 yrs. Right upper quadrant was most commonly involved. Out of 121 cases, 84 underwent surgery, 29 conservative treatment & 8 both conservative with surgery. 57(32.38%) patients were diagnosed with mastalgia with or without nodularity. Diagnostic accuracy of Sono mammography in detection of fibroadenoma is 98.68. Diagnostic accuracy of FNAC and Histopathology in detection of fibrocystic changes is 98.8. Out of total 176 cases, 94 underwent surgery, 73 conservative treatment and 9 underwent conservative with surgery. Conclusion: The ANDI classification, a comprehensive system, can resolve most of the issues that face a clinician when dealing with benign breast diseases.