Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pathogenesis and Treatment Options of Cancer Related Anemia: Perspective for a Targeted Mechanism-Based Approach

Cancer-related anemia (CRA) is a common sign occurring in more than 30% of cancer patients at diagnosis before the initiation of antineoplastic therapy. CRA has a relevant influence on survival, disease progression, treatment efficacy, and the patients’ quality of life. It is more often detected in patients with advanced stage disease, where it represents a specific symptom of the neoplastic disease, as a consequence of chronic inflammation. In fact, CRA is characterized by biological and hematologic features that resemble those described in anemia associated to chronic inflammatory disease. Proinflammatory cytokine, mainly IL-6, which are released by both tumor and immune cells, play a pivotal action in CRA etiopathogenesis: they promote alterations in erythroid progenitor proliferation, erythropoietin (EPO) production, survival of circulating erythrocytes, iron balance, redox status, and energy metabolism, all of which can lead to anemia. The discovery of hepcidin allowed a greater knowledge of the relationships between immune cells, iron metabolism, and anemia in chronic inflammatory diseases. Additionally, chronic inflammation influences a compromised nutritional status, which in turn might induce or contribute to CRA. In the present review we examine the multifactorial pathogenesis of CRA discussing the main and novel mechanisms by which immune, nutritional, and metabolic components affect its onset and severity. Moreover, we analyze the status of the art and the perspective for the treatment of CRA. Notably, despite the high incidence and clinical relevance of CRA, controlled clinical studies testing the most appropriate treatment for CRA are scarce, and its management in clinical practice remains challenging. The present review may be useful to indicate the development of an effective approach based on a detailed assessment of all factors potentially involved in the pathogenesis of CRA. This mechanism-based approach is essential for clinicians to plan a safe, targeted, and successful therapy, thereby promoting a relevant amelioration of patients’ quality of life.
Analyzing and Quantifying the Effect of $k$ -Line Failures in Power Grids

Contingency analysis in power grids is one of the most effective ways to improve grids’ resilience against failures. The main goal of contingency analysis is to detect probable failures in the grid that result in a critical state and deploy preventive measures to avoid such a state. Due to the large number of possibilities, however, high-order contingency analysis is computationally expensive and not fully deployed. In order to circumvent this issue, we analytically compute the redistribution of power flows following a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math></inline-formula>-line failure (i.e., failures in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math></inline-formula> distinct lines) using the dc power flow model and based on that introduce the <italic>disturbance value</italic> of a <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math> </inline-formula>-line failure. We show that this value can be efficiently computed in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(1)$</tex-math></inline-formula> for any set of line failures independent of the size of the grid and can be effectively used to filter out noncritical contingencies. The disturbance value can, therefore, significantly reduce the time complexity of contingency analysis by revealing contingencies that are vital for more in depth analysis and pave the way for the deployment of high-order contingency analysis in power grids.
Ocean surface slick characterization by multi-polarization Radarsat-2 data

Marine oil spills are an important environmental problem, and satellite SAR remote sensing have become a valuable tool for the detection and monitoring of these spills. Natural phenomena with similar appearance as oil in SAR images, producing false detections, compose a challenge for oil spill observation services. One such lookalike phenomena is biogenic slicks produced by marine organisms. In this study we evaluate multi-polarization features for oil spill characterization and oil versus biogenic slick discrimination. During large-scale oil-on-water exercises conducted in the North Sea in June 2011 and June 2012, both mineral oil and plant oil were released and imaged by Radarsat-2 in Fine Quad-polarization mode. The plant oil will form a lm resembling biogenic slicks. The mineral oil spill and simulated look-alike are in this study compared based on multi-polarization features, combining the information in HH and VV channels. The polarimetric measurements from 2011 have earlier been analysed, and a potential for discrimination between mineral oil and biogenic slicks is found. The aim of the current study is to repeat the polarimetric analysis on the new independent data set from 2012. Preliminary results of the 2012 data set reveal both internal and between slick type variations, giving support to our previous findings from 2011.
Single Image Dehazing Based on the Physical Model and MSRCR Algorithm

To address the hazy weather image degradation problem, we propose a single image dehazing method based on a physical model and the brightness components of the image by using a multi-scale retinex with color restoration algorithm. The overall dehazing process involves three components, including the atmospheric light value calculation, transmission map estimation, and recovery of the hazy image scene radiance. Our contribution is that we propose a novel algorithm to dehaze a single image by calculating the atmospheric light value and computing the transmission map while considering the dynamic range of the image. Experimental results show that our algorithm can effectively improve the image quality degraded by foggy weather and retain sufficient image details.
Outcomes of Older Hospitalized Patients Requiring Rapid Response Team Activation for Acute Deterioration

Objectives: Rapid response teams are groups of healthcare providers that have been implemented by many hospitals to respond to acutely deteriorating patients admitted to the hospital wards. Hospitalized older patients are at particular risk of deterioration. We sought to examine outcomes of older patients requiring rapid response team activation. Design: Analysis of a prospectively collected registry. Setting: Two hospitals within a single tertiary care level hospital system between 2012 and 2016. Patients: Five-thousand nine-hundred ninety-five patients were analyzed. Comparisons were made between older patients (defined as ≥ 75 yr old) and younger patients. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: All patient information, outcomes, and rapid response team activation information were gathered at the time of rapid response team activation and assessment. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality, analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. Two-thousand three-hundred nine were older patients (38.5%). Of these, 835 (36.2%) died in-hospital, compared with 998 younger patients (27.1%) (adjusted odds ratio, 1.83 [1.54–2.18]; p < 0.001). Among patients admitted from home, surviving older patients were more likely to be discharged to a long-term care facility (adjusted odds ratio, 2.38 [95% CI, 1.89–3.33]; p < 0.001). Older patients were more likely to have prolonged delay to rapid response team activation (adjusted odds ratio, 1.79 [1.59–2.94]; p < 0.001). Among patients with goals of care allowing for ICU admission, older patients were less likely to be admitted to the ICU (adjusted odds ratio, 0.66 [0.36–0.79]), and less likely to have rapid response team activation during daytime hours (adjusted odds ratio, 0.73 [0.62–0.98]; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Older patients with in-hospital deterioration requiring rapid response team activation had increased odds of death and long-term care disposition. Rapid response team activation for older patients was more likely to be delayed, and occur during nighttime hours. These findings highlight the worse outcomes seen among older patients with in-hospital deterioration, identifying areas for future quality improvement.
Relationship between Hands-on and Written Coursework Assessments with Critical Thinking Skills in Structured Programming Course

Learning to program has been challenging to most learners including students at UTP. Not only the learners need to acquire knowledge and understanding of the essential programming concepts, but more importantly they also need to sharpen their critical thinking skills in the form of ability to apply or assimilate these concepts into coding of workable programs which solved arrays of problems. Thus, correct course assessments to measure the level of learners' critical thinking skills for problem solving throughout the learning period is necessary to ensure learners' success at the end of the course. Hence, in this paper, we share our findings when comparing the scores obtained by learners in their hands-on and written coursework assessments for Structured Programming course against their final examination score, which the latter's questions have been categorized according to levels of cognitive Bloom's Taxonomy (BT). Correlation test conducted on the data suggest that there is a correlation between Written assessment and final examination score for all levels of cognitive BT. Regression test further confirms there is a dependency between Written assessment and the final exam score as well. As for Hands-on assessment very weak to almost none correlation is found.
Sexual behaviors: study in the youth

ABSTRACT Objective: To characterize sexual behaviors in a sample of adolescents and youth. Methods: An analytical descriptive study using a questionnaire about sexual behaviors, adapted from the World Health Organization. It was distributed to students from a Portuguese city aged 14-24 years, during two months. Two age groups were defined: G1 - students aged 14-19 years; G2 - aged 20-24 years. Results: The sample included 2,369 students, 61% females and 70% in G1. The mean age of first sexual intercourse was 16.4±1.8 years; 93% used some contraceptive method in the first sexual intercourse. Out of those who did not use contraception in the first sexual intercourse, 83% were in G1 (p<0.001). Emergency contraception was used at least once by 54% (63% in G2, p<0.001). Among those who had unprotected sexual intercourses, 9% were under the influence of alcohol, 53.6% were female and 53.4% were in G2 (p<0.001). Homosexual contacts occurred in 21% of cases; in that, 62% in G1 and 84% among females (p<0.001). Conclusion: The use of contraceptionin the first sexual intercourse was common in our sample. However, the number of adolescents not using any contraceptive method in subsequent sexual intercourses, and the high percentage of them who consider it unnecessary, are a concern. Unprotected sexual intercourses, as well as unplanned intercourses and under influence of alcohol or drugs, especially in the youngest, urge the need for intervention regarding sexual education.
Comparative Evaluation of the Prognostic Value Between the Ocular Trauma Score and the Pediatric Penetrating Ocular Trauma Score

Abstract Controversy exists about the utility of the Ocular Trauma Score (OTS) in children. A new score was developed specifically for children—the Pediatric Penetrating Ocular Trauma Score (POTS)—which proved to be of prognostic value in young patients with penetrating eye injuries. The purpose of the study was to compare the prognostic value of OTS and POTS in children with open-globe injuries in a cohort of Brazilian children. This was a retrospective, interventional case series and included 37 children with open-globe injuries seen at the Santa Casa de Sao Paulo Emergency Service. Mean age was 8.0 ± 3.9 years; 28 were male and 9 female. All patients were reviewed on the basis of time and circumstance of injury, time of surgery, type of penetrating injury, initial and final visual acuity (VA), and concomitant eye disease. Both OTS and POTS categories were calculated based on specific variables. The final achieved VA was compared with the predicted VA for both scores with Kendall's test for significant association; the agreement between the predicted VA for both OTS and POTS was accessed with the Cohen kappa coefficient. The association between OTS and achieved VA was good (Kendall Tau-b = 0.511, P = 0.001), as well as between POTS and achieved VA (Kendall Tau-b = 0.422, P = 0.002). The agreement between the predicted VA for OTS and POTS was fair (kappa = 0.400). In conclusion, in this small cohort of Brazilian children with open-globe injuries, there was no superiority of one score over the other and both OTS and POTS underestimated the potential best-corrected VA after treatment.
FRAGE: Frequency-Agnostic Word Representation

Continuous word representation (aka word embedding) is a basic building block in many neural network-based models used in natural language processing tasks. Although it is widely accepted that words with similar semantics should be close to each other in the embedding space, we find that word embeddings learned in several tasks are biased towards word frequency: the embeddings of high-frequency and low-frequency words lie in different subregions of the embedding space, and the embedding of a rare word and a popular word can be far from each other even if they are semantically similar. This makes learned word embeddings ineffective, especially for rare words, and consequently limits the performance of these neural network models. In this paper, we develop a neat, simple yet effective way to learn \emph{FRequency-AGnostic word Embedding} (FRAGE) using adversarial training. We conducted comprehensive studies on ten datasets across four natural language processing tasks, including word similarity, language modeling, machine translation and text classification. Results show that with FRAGE, we achieve higher performance than the baselines in all tasks.
The Reachability Problem for Petri Nets Is Not Elementary

Petri nets, also known as vector addition systems, are a long established model of concurrency with extensive applications in modeling and analysis of hardware, software, and database systems, as well as chemical, biological, and business processes. The central algorithmic problem for Petri nets is reachability: whether from the given initial configuration there exists a sequence of valid execution steps that reaches the given final configuration. The complexity of the problem has remained unsettled since the 1960s, and it is one of the most prominent open questions in the theory of verification. Decidability was proved by Mayr in his seminal STOC 1981 work, and, currently, the best published upper bound is non-primitive recursive Ackermannian of Leroux and Schmitz from Symposium on Logic in Computer Science 2019. We establish a non-elementary lower bound, i.e., that the reachability problem needs a tower of exponentials of time and space. Until this work, the best lower bound has been exponential space, due to Lipton in 1976. The new lower bound is a major breakthrough for several reasons. Firstly, it shows that the reachability problem is much harder than the coverability (i.e., state reachability) problem, which is also ubiquitous but has been known to be complete for exponential space since the late 1970s. Secondly, it implies that a plethora of problems from formal languages, logic, concurrent systems, process calculi, and other areas, which are known to admit reductions from the Petri nets reachability problem, are also not elementary. Thirdly, it makes obsolete the current best lower bounds for the reachability problems for two key extensions of Petri nets: with branching and with a pushdown stack. We develop a construction that uses arbitrarily large pairs of values with ratio R to provide zero testable counters that are bounded by R. At the heart of our proof is then a novel gadget, the so-called factorial amplifier that, assuming availability of counters that are zero testable and bounded by k, guarantees to produce arbitrarily large pairs of values whose ratio is exactly the factorial of k. Repeatedly composing the factorial amplifier with itself by means of the former construction enables us to compute, in linear time, Petri nets that simulate Minsky machines whose counters are bounded by a tower of exponentials, which yields the non-elementary lower bound. By refining this scheme further, we, in fact, already establish hardness for h-exponential space for Petri nets with h + 13 counters.
Metacognitive approaches to the treatment of psychosis: a comparison of four approaches

In light of increasing interest in metacognition and its role in recovery from psychosis, a range of new treatments focused on addressing metacognitive deficits have emerged. These include Metacognitive Therapy, Metacognitive Training, metacognitive insight and reflection therapy, and metacognitive interpersonal therapy for psychosis. While each of these treatments uses the term metacognitive, each differs in terms of their epistemological underpinnings, their structure, format, presumed mechanisms of action, and primary outcomes. To clarify how these treatments converge and diverge, we first offer a brief history of metacognition as well as its potential role in an individual’s response to and recovery from complicated mental health conditions including psychosis. We then review the background, practices, and supporting evidence for each treatment. Finally, we will offer a framework for thinking about how each of these approaches may ultimately complement rather than contradict one another and highlight areas for development. We suggest first that each is concerned with something beyond what people with psychosis think about themselves and their lives. Each of these four approaches is interested in how patients with severe mental illness think about themselves. Each looks at immediate reactions and ideas that frame the meaning of thoughts. Second, each of these approaches is more concerned with why people make dysfunctional decisions and take maladaptive actions rather than what comprised those decisions and actions. Third, despite their differences, each of these treatments is true to the larger construct of metacognition and is focused on person’s relationships to their mental experiences, promoting various forms of self-understanding which allow for better self-management. Each can be distinguished from other cognitive and skills-based approaches to the treatment of psychosis in their emphasis on sense-making rather than learning a new specific thing to say, think, or do in a given situation.
Graphene-Based Light Sensing: Fabrication, Characterisation, Physical Properties and Performance

Graphene and graphene-based materials exhibit exceptional optical and electrical properties with great promise for novel applications in light detection. However, several challenges prevent the full exploitation of these properties in commercial devices. Such challenges include the limited linear dynamic range (LDR) of graphene-based photodetectors, the lack of efficient generation and extraction of photoexcited charges, the smearing of photoactive junctions due to hot-carriers effects, large-scale fabrication and ultimately the environmental stability of the constituent materials. In order to overcome the aforementioned limits, different approaches to tune the properties of graphene have been explored. A new class of graphene-based devices has emerged where chemical functionalisation, hybridisation with light-sensitising materials and the formation of heterostructures with other 2D materials have led to improved performance, stability or versatility. For example, intercalation of graphene with FeCl3 is highly stable in ambient conditions and can be used to define photo-active junctions characterized by an unprecedented LDR while graphene oxide (GO) is a very scalable and versatile material which supports the photodetection from UV to THz frequencies. Nanoparticles and quantum dots have been used to enhance the absorption of pristine graphene and to enable high gain thanks to the photogating effect. In the same way, hybrid detectors made from stacked sequences of graphene and layered transition-metal dichalcogenides enabled a class of devices with high gain and responsivity. In this work, we will review the performance and advances in functionalised graphene and hybrid photodetectors, with particular focus on the physical mechanisms governing the photoresponse, the performance and possible future paths of investigation.
Interface Local Magnetic Moment and Its Near Periodic Modulation in Oxide SrRuO3|LaAlO3 Heterojunctions: An Ab Initio Investigation

Using density functional theory, the interface local magnetic moment and its variation are explored in SrRuO<sub>3</sub>|LaAlO<sub>3</sub>|vacuum (001) heterostructures with increasing number of LaAlO<sub>3</sub> unit cells. The computed magnetic moment projected on interface planes is found to modulate nearly periodically as the number of LaAlO<sub>3</sub> unit cells is increased in SrRuO<sub>3</sub>|LaAlO<sub>3</sub>|vacuum structure. The magnetic moment localized at the interface RuO<sub>2</sub> plane shifts from a lower value of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 0.7~\mu _{B}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to a higher value of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 1.35~\mu _{B}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and changes by ~42% as LaAlO<sub>3</sub> changes from non-stoichiometric to stoichiometric with increase in its thickness. However, the magnitude shifts from higher to lower value as LaAlO<sub>3</sub> changes from stoichiometric to non-stoichiometric with further increase in thickness. The large variation and nearly periodic modulation of magnetic moment localized at the interface with increasing LaAlO<sub>3</sub> thickness arise due to spin-dependent screening of effective total charge of LaAlO<sub>3</sub> film by accumulated free carriers at the interface in heterostructure. The modulation of interface local magnetic moment using ultrathin LaAlO<sub>3</sub> film at the oxide heterointerfaces can be exploited as an additional functionality, in conjunction with those reported recently such as control of band alignment and enhancement of the electric conductivity at the interface.
Spatial Metaphor and the Development of Cross-Domain Mappings in Early Childhood

Spatial language is often used metaphorically to describe other domains, including time (long sound) and pitch (high sound). How does experience with these metaphors shape the ability to associate space with other domains? Here, we tested 3- to 6-year-old English-speaking children and adults with a cross-domain matching task. We probed cross-domain relations that are expressed in English metaphors for time and pitch (length-time and height-pitch) as well as relations that are unconventional in English but expressed in other languages (size-time and thickness-pitch). Participants were tested with a perceptual matching task, in which they matched between spatial stimuli and sounds of different durations or pitches, and a linguistic matching task, in which they matched between a label denoting a spatial attribute, duration, or pitch and a picture or sound representing another dimension. Contrary to previous claims that experience with linguistic metaphors is necessary for children to make cross-domain mappings, children performed above chance for both familiar and unfamiliar relations in both tasks, as did adults. Children’s performance was also better when a label was provided for one of the dimensions, but only when making length-time, size-time, and height-pitch mappings (not thickness-pitch mappings). These findings suggest that although experience with metaphorical language is not necessary to make cross-domain mappings, labels can promote these mappings, both when they have familiar metaphorical uses (e.g., English long denotes both length and duration) and when they describe dimensions that share a common ordinal reference frame (e.g., size and duration but not thickness and pitch).