Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fairness for Whom? Critically reframing fairness with Nash Welfare Product

Recent studies on disparate impact in machine learning applications have sparked a debate around the concept of fairness along with attempts to formalize its different criteria. Many of these approaches focus on reducing prediction errors while maximizing sole utility of the institution. This work seeks to reconceptualize and critically frame the existing discourse on fairness by underlining the implicit biases embedded in common understandings of fairness in the literature and how they contrast with its corresponding economic and legal definitions. This paper expands the concept of utility and fairness by bringing in concepts from established literature in welfare economics and game theory. We then translate these concepts for the algorithmic prediction domain by defining a formalization of Nash Welfare Product that seeks to expand utility by collapsing that of the institution using the prediction tool and the individual subject to the prediction into one function. We then apply a modulating function that makes the fairness and welfare trade-offs explicit based on designated policy goals and then apply it to a temporal model to take into account the effects of decisions beyond the scope of one-shot predictions. We apply this on a binary classification problem and present results of a multi-epoch simulation based on the UCI Adult Income dataset and a test case analysis of the ProPublica recidivism dataset that show that expanding the concept of utility results in a fairer distribution correcting for the embedded biases in the dataset without sacrificing the classifier accuracy.
Stress, Depressive Symptoms, and Maternal Self-Efficacy in First-Time Mothers: Modelling and Predicting Change across the First Six Months of Motherhood.

BACKGROUND First-time mothers commonly experience stress and depressive symptoms in the postpartum period. Maternal self-efficacy has been shown to be an important protective factor against these experiences; however, research on the dynamic nature of stress, depressive symptoms, and maternal self-efficacy is limited. The aim of this study was to document changes in these psychological factors among first-time mothers, and determine how early maternal self-efficacy perceptions may predict change in stress and depressive symptoms over the first 6 months postpartum. METHODS Sixty first-time Australian mothers were recruited during their third trimester of pregnancy. Participants completed a baseline survey during the third trimester of pregnancy (M = 32.87 weeks, SD = 2.62 weeks), and subsequently reported stress, depressive symptoms, and maternal self-efficacy every 3 weeks postpartum for 6 months. Latent growth curve modelling was used to estimate participants' change over time for stress and depressive symptoms. RESULTS First-time mothers' stress and depressive symptoms peaked, and maternal self-efficacy was weakest, at 3 weeks postpartum. Maternal self-efficacy at 3 weeks postpartum was a significant (negative) predictor of 3-week levels of, and also (positively) predicted later reductions in, stress. CONCLUSION Future interventions aimed at bolstering early maternal self-efficacy may protect against postpartum stress for first-time mothers.
Transfer of Episodic Self-Referential Memory Across Amnesic Identities in Dissociative Identity Disorder Using the Autobiographical Implicit Association Test

Individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) often report having no access to autobiographical experiences encoded by other identities. This research used the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) to determine whether there was transfer of episodic self-referential memory events across amnesic identities. Nineteen DID individuals, 16 DID simulators, and 41 comparison participants (divided into amnesic and nonamnesic groups) engaged with an audio vignette of embarrassing scenarios to produce the experience of episodic self-referential events. Results showed transfer of episodic self-referential memory using the aIAT across identities that reported no conscious awareness of encoded content in DID. These aIAT results in DID patients were similar to the nonamnesic comparison group and the simulator group, and differed from the amnestic comparison group. These results are in line with previous literature showing transfer of memories, but extends this work to episodic self-referential memory.
Factors That Affect Quality of Life in Young Adults With Type 1 Diabetes

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine in young adults (18-35 years) with type 1 diabetes (T1DM) factors known to be associated with quality of life: fear of complications (including hypoglycemia), self-efficacy for diabetes self-management, and self-management of diabetes. Methods Participants (N = 180) completed online a Demographic/General Health Survey, Diabetes Quality of Life Measure, Hypoglycemia Fear Scale, Fear of Complications Questionnaire, Diabetes Behavior Rating Scale, Self-Efficacy for Diabetes Self-Management, and Diabetes Knowledge Test. Results Multiple linear regression showed that quality of life was significantly associated with fear of hypoglycemia, fear of complications, and self-efficacy. Quality of life was not associated with either diabetes self-management behaviors or diabetes knowledge. Conclusions Although participants demonstrated appropriate self-management behaviors and moderate self-efficacy, on the Diabetes Quality of Life Instrument, they reported high dissatisfaction with the burden that diabetes places on their families and the amount of time it takes to manage their diabetes. Quality of life was significantly positively correlated with fear of hypoglycemia and fear of complications. Quality of life was significantly negatively correlated with self-efficacy. These observations suggest that, as fear of hypoglycemia and fear of complications increase, quality of life decreases, and as self-efficacy increases, so does quality of life. Thus, fear of hypoglycemia, fear of complications, and self-efficacy may be appropriate primary outcomes to use in interventions designed to improve quality of life in young adults with T1DM. Findings from this study extend our understanding of being a young adult with T1DM.
A role for paracrine interleukin‐6 signaling in the tumor microenvironment in prostate tumor growth

Interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) is a mediator of inflammation that can facilitate prostate cancer progression. We previously demonstrated that IL‐6 is present in the prostate tumor microenvironment and is restricted almost exclusively to the stromal compartment. The present study examined the influence of paracrine IL‐6 signaling on prostate tumor growth using allograft models of mouse prostate cancer (TRAMP‐C2), colon cancer (MC38), and melanoma (B16) cell lines in wildtype (WT) and IL‐6 knockout (IL‐6−/−) mice.
Quitting Behaviors Among Dual Cigarette and E-Cigarette Users and Cigarette Smokers Enrolled in the Tobacco User Adult Cohort

PURPOSE We examined quitting behaviors among a cohort of dual users (cigarettes and electronic cigarettes [e-cigarettes]) and exclusive cigarette smokers for: (1) cigarette smoking reduction, (2) quit attempts, (3) abstinence from cigarettes, and (4) abstinence from all tobacco products. METHODS Participants enrolled in the Tobacco User Adult Cohort and categorized as "daily" user of cigarettes and "daily" or "some days per week" use of e-cigarettes (ie, dual users; n = 88) or "daily" user of cigarettes only (ie, cigarette smokers; n = 617) served as the analytic sample. Participants were interviewed face to face every 6 months, through 18 months. Data on self-reported current product(s) used, cessation interest, quit attempts and abstinence from cigarettes, and all tobacco products were collected. RESULTS No difference in reduction of cigarette consumption over time was noted between groups. Rates of reporting an attempt to quit all tobacco products (≥ 24 hours of not using any tobacco in an attempt to quit) also did not differ by group. Compared to cigarette smokers, dual users were more likely to report abstinence from cigarettes at 6 months (OR = 2.54, p = .045) but not at 12 or 18 months. There was no significant difference in abstinence from all tobacco products by group at 6, 12, or 18 months. CONCLUSIONS Although dual use of e-cigarettes has been cited as a potential cessation tool for cigarette smokers, our findings indicated that this association was only observed in the short term. We also found no evidence of any association between dual use and eventual abstinence from all tobacco products. IMPLICATIONS Our study observed that, in the natural environment, dual users of cigarettes and e-cigarettes were more likely than cigarette smokers to quit cigarettes in the short term but no more likely to quit using cigarettes and all tobacco products over time.
Early HIV treatment and labour outcomes: A case study of mining workers in South Africa

This study examines whether labour outcomes of HIV-infected workers treated with antiretrovirals are associated with the stage of the disease when commencing therapy. We use data on employment separation and absenteeism from the workplace health programme of South Africa's largest coal mining company over the period of January 2009 to March 2017 in a Cox proportional hazards model. When treatment was initiated at a CD4+ T cell count above 350 cells/μl, the risk of separating from the company was 37% lower and the risk of absence was 20%t lower than initiating at a CD4 count below 200 cells/μl, and these differences persist over time. Also, we find that workers initiating antiretroviral therapy at CD4 ≥ 350 have an 8% lower risk of absence prior to treatment. Although many companies and the South African government have adopted universal test-and-treat policies aiming to initiate all HIV-infected people as early as possible, most HIV patients still start treatment late in the disease course when their CD4 counts have fallen to low levels. Our results indicate early HIV detection and treatment could have large productivity gains.
Influence of Structured Information in Bug Report Descriptions on IR-Based Bug Localization

Over the years, researcher proposed multiple information retrieval (IR) based bug localization techniques. The foundation of the approaches relies on textual similarity of the bug report description and the source code files. The basic assumption is that these descriptions are well suited to query the code base. However, often bug reports contain structured information such as stack traces and source code next to natural language, which might interfere with the initial belief. In this paper, we systematically analyze the influence of structured information on IR-based techniques. Therefore a study on 7,334 bug reports, out of which more than 30% contain structured information, was conducted. Our results show, that stack traces tend to negatively affect IR-based bug localization performance and require special handling.
Deep Neural Network Based Energy Disaggregation

In smart electricity grids, energy disaggregation significantly contributes to better demand side management, load forecasting and energy savings via estimating appliance level energy consumption from the aggregated smart meter data. This paper proposes a deep neural network based system by combining convolutional neural networks and variational auto-encoders for energy disaggregation. Domestic Appliance-Level Electricity dataset (UK-DALE) is used along with the standard error measures such as Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Signal Aggregate Error (SAE) in order to evaluate the proposed system performance. Test results show that the proposed system improves the state-of-the-art performance by 44% and 19% based on SAE and MAE respectively.
Cannabis and the Anxiety of Fragmentation—A Systems Approach for Finding an Anxiolytic Cannabis Chemotype

Cannabis sativa is a medicinal herb with a diverse range of chemotypes that can exert both anxiolytic and anxiogenic effects on humans. Medical cannabis patients receiving organically grown cannabis from a single source were surveyed about the effectiveness of cannabis for treating anxiety. Patients rated cannabis as highly effective overall for treating anxiety with an average score of 8.03 on a Likert scale of 0 to 10 (0 = not effective, 10 = extremely effective). Patients also identified which strains they found the most or least effective for relieving their symptoms of anxiety. To find correlations between anxiolytic activity and chemotype, the top four strains voted most and least effective were analyzed by HPLC-MS/MS to quantify cannabinoids and GC-MS to quantify terpenes. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and trans-nerolidol have statistically significant correlations with increased anxiolytic activity. Guiaol, eucalyptol, γ-terpinene, α-phellandrene, 3-carene, and sabinene hydrate all have significant correlations with decreased anxiolytic activity. Further studies are needed to better elucidate the entourage effects that contribute to the anxiolytic properties of cannabis varieties.
The clinical spectrum of Fontan-associated liver disease: results from a prospective multimodality screening cohort

AIMS Liver fibrosis and cirrhosis are a consequence of a Fontan physiology, and determine prognosis. It is unclear whether non-invasive assessment of liver pathology is helpful to provide clinically relevant information. The aims of this study were to assess the spectrum of Fontan-associated liver disease (FALD) and usefulness of non-invasive methods to assess biopsy confirmed liver fibrosis. METHODS AND RESULTS Hepatic screening of consecutive patients consisted of a blood panel, ultrasonography, elastography, contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/computed tomography (CT) scan, and liver biopsy (scored with Fontan specific fibrosis scores and collagen proportionate area; CPA). Fibrosis parameters, varices, ascites, and splenomegaly were measured on imaging. Thirty-eight of 49 referred patients (27 ± 6.6 years, 73.7% male) underwent the complete screening protocol. Liver fibrosis on biopsy was present in all patients, and classified as severe (Stages 3-4) in 68%. Median CPA was 22.5% (16.9-29.5) and correlated with individual fibrosis scores. ELF® and liver stiffness were elevated, but MELD-XI scores were low in all patients. Fibrosis severity neither correlated to ELF® and liver stiffness, nor to (semi-) quantitative fibrosis parameters on MRI/CT. Varices were present in 50% and hyperenhancing nodules in 25% of patients, both independent of fibrosis stage, but varices were associated with higher CPA values. CONCLUSION The FALD spectrum includes both hepatic congestion and severe fibrosis, with signs of portal hypertension and hyperenhancing nodules as significant manifestations. Routine imaging, transient elastography, and serum biomarkers are unable to accurately assess severity of liver fibrosis in this cohort. Future research should focus on validating new diagnostic tools with biopsy as the reference standard.
Effectiveness of integrated psychological therapy on clinical, neuropsychological, emotional and functional outcome in schizophrenia: a RCT study

Abstract Background: Cognitive impairment is considered a central feature of schizophrenia (SZ) and several rehabilitation treatments have been developed to try to improve cognitive deficits. Aims: The aim of the present study was to analyze the effectiveness of integrated psychological therapy (IPT) compared with a standard treatment (TAU) in two groups of patients with SZ, using a comprehensive testing battery of clinical, cognitive, social cognition and functional outcome domains. Methods: Forty-one patients with SZ were assigned to IPT or TAU groups in a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Psychopathological, neuropsychological, emotional and functional outcome variables were assessed at baseline and after 36 weeks of treatment. Results: The IPT group showed significant improvements than the TAU group regarding clinical and functional outcome variables. Moreover, the IPT group improved significantly in the cognitive domains and emotional functioning. Finally, linear regression has highlighted that the improvement of cognitive variables depends on having done the IPT treatment. Conclusions: IPT seems to be effective in improving clinical, neuropsychological, emotional and functional outcome in chronic SZ inpatients. Further studies would be desirable to deepen the effectiveness of IPT in the field of the psychiatric rehabilitation pointing to the possibility of recovery from mental illness.
Light Sensing Enhancement and Energy Saving Improvement in Concentric Double-MIS(p) Tunnel Diode Structure With Inner Gate Outer Sensor Operation

Double-metal–insulator–semiconductor tunnel diodes with concentric structure are able to exhibit transistor and light sensor behavior. Generally, the outer ring is used to serve as a control gate and supply additional charges to the inner sensor through coupling. However, there is not yet any discussion about the contrary situation in exchanging the conventional role of the inner device and the outer ring. In this paper, we compare two operating situations with no other variants involved. Comparing the results of them, we find that when the inner device plays as a control gate and the outer ring being a sensor (i.e., inner gate outer sensor), the asymmetric coupling effect can make the outer sensor achieve much higher light-to-dark current ratio, however, only need nearly half of the sensor bias under the same control gate bias. In addition, further calculation of total power consumption shows that there is no larger power needed behind this more sensitive performance compared with the conventional operation.
Sexual Size and Shape Dimorphism in Three Species of Parasitoid Wasps with Burrowing Females: Spalangia endius, Spalangia nigroaenea, and Spalangia nigra (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae)

Abstract The parasitoid wasps Spalangia endius Walker, Spalangia nigroaenea Curtis, and Spalangia nigra Latrielle (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) develop on filth fly pupae. Females burrow through decaying organic matter and parasitize hosts; whereas, at least in S. endius, males tend to stay above ground searching for mates. Both sexes lack obvious digging morphology such as enlarged forelegs and are not known to exhibit physical aggression. Size data were obtained from specimens from Illinois field-collected hosts for all three species and from a Florida laboratory colony for S. endius. The degree of sexual size dimorphism varied with body part and species, but the direction of bias was consistent between the field and laboratory specimens of S. endius. Females had wider abdomens in S. nigroaenea and S. nigra (not measured in S. endius). In all three species, females had longer heads than males, both in absolute size and relative to width. The latter is referred to as narrowness. Forewings were significantly narrower in females compared with in males for both S. endius and S. nigroaenea. Thorax narrowness was either greater in males (S. endius) or was not significantly different between the sexes (S. nigroaenea and S. nigra). Patterns of sexual size dimorphism seem consistent with females’ need to store eggs and burrow. For all three species, there was overlap between males and females in all body parts measured. Thus, these size measurements will be unreliable to differentiate the sexes. Size ratios also overlapped.
Comparing the Cobas Liat Influenza A/B and respiratory syncytial virus assay with multiplex nucleic acid testing

Influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) detection with short turn‐around‐time (TAT) is pivotal for rapid decisions regarding treatment and infection control. However, negative rapid testing results may come from poor assay sensitivity or from influenza‐like illnesses caused by other community‐acquired respiratory viruses (CARVs). We prospectively compared the performance of Cobas Liat Influenza A/B and RSV assay (LIAT) with our routine multiplexNAT‐1 (xTAG Respiratory Pathogen Panel; Luminex) and multiplexNAT‐2 (ePlex‐RPP; GenMark Diagnostics) using 194 consecutive nasopharyngeal swabs from patients with influenza‐like illness during winter 2017/2018. Discordant results were reanalyzed by specific in‐house quantitative nucleic acid amplification testing (NAT). LIAT was positive for influenza virus‐A, ‐B, and RSV in 18 (9.3%), 13 (6.7%), and 55 (28.4%) samples, and negative in 108 samples. Other CARVs were detected by multiplexNAT in 66 (34.0%) samples. Concordant results for influenza and RSV were seen in 190 (97.9%), discordant results in 4 (2.1%), which showed low‐level RSV (<40 000 copies/mL). Sensitivity and specificity of LIAT for influenza‐A, ‐B, and RSV were 100%, 100% and 100%, and 100%, 99.5% and 100%, respectively. The average TAT of LIAT was 20 minutes compared to 6 hours and 2 hours for the multiplexNAT‐1 and ‐2, respectively. Thus, LIAT demonstrated excellent sensitivity and specificity for influenza and RSV, which together with the simple sample processing and short TAT renders this assay suitable for near‐patient testing.
Improving Residual Block for Semantic Image Segmentation

Currently, most state-of-the-art semantic segmentation methods employ residual network as base network. Residual network is composed of residual blocks. In this paper, we present an improved residual block called pyramid residual block to explicitly exploit context information and enhance useful features. In contrast to the standard residual block, the proposed pyramid residual block contains two newly added components: pyramid pooling module and attention mechanism. The former aggregates different-region-based context information. And the latter is able to adaptively re-calibrate feature responses through element-wise multiplication operation, thus enhancing useful features and suppressing less useful ones. Our proposed pyramid residual block demonstrates outstanding performance in PASCAL VOC 2012 segmentation datasets, and improve the segmentation accuracy by a large margin over the standard residual block.
Adaptive Neural Network Tracking Control for Robotic Manipulators With Dead Zone

In this paper, the adaptive neural network (NN) tracking control problem is addressed for robot manipulators subject to dead-zone input. The control objective is to design an adaptive NN controller to guarantee the stability of the systems and obtain good performance. Different from the existing results, which used NN to approximate the nonlinearities directly, NNs are employed to identify the originally designed virtual control signals with unknown nonlinear items in this paper. Moreover, a sequence of virtual control signals and real controller are designed. The adaptive backstepping control method and Lyapunov stability theory are used to prove the proposed controller can ensure all the signals in the systems are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded, and the output of the systems can track the reference signal closely. Finally, the proposed adaptive control strategy is applied to the Puma 560 robot manipulator to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Estimating Possibility of Applying Magnetic Sensors in Advanced Probing System of Tunneling Shield

The possibilities of placing magneto-sensitive sensors on the hull of a tunneling shield were considered to implement the magnetometric part in the advanced sensing system designed to detect power cable lines and ferromagnetic objects on the tunneling operation line or in close proximity to it. The change in topology of the magnetic field produced by the current-carrying cable line and caused by the presence of massive ferromagnetic objects and cable shield was numerically studied. The dependencies were obtained for the magnitude of magnetic induction in the soil to the twisted-wire gradient of the three-phase power cable line and the possibility to detect this induction were determined. The theoretical possibility to determine the presence of ferromagnetic objects in the soil without artificial sources of electromagnetic fields was justified by the change in the magnetization characteristic of the tunneling shield hull in the geomagnetic field.