Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Iterative Neural Network Pruning, Reinitialization, and the Similarity of Masks

We examine how recently documented, fundamental phenomena in deep learning models subject to pruning are affected by changes in the pruning procedure. Specifically, we analyze differences in the connectivity structure and learning dynamics of pruned models found through a set of common iterative pruning techniques, to address questions of uniqueness of trainable, high-sparsity sub-networks, and their dependence on the chosen pruning method. In convolutional layers, we document the emergence of structure induced by magnitude-based unstructured pruning in conjunction with weight rewinding that resembles the effects of structured pruning. We also show empirical evidence that weight stability can be automatically achieved through apposite pruning techniques.
Temperature Dependence of the Magnetic Properties of IrMn/CoFeB/Ru/CoFeB Exchange Biased Synthetic Antiferromagnets

Synthetic antiferromagnets (SAF) are widely used for a plethora of applications among which data storage, computing, and in the emerging field of magnonics. In this framework, controlling the magnetic properties of SAFs via localized thermal treatments represents a promising route for building novel magnonic materials. In this paper, we study via vibration sample magnetometry the temperature dependence of the magnetic properties of sputtered exchange bias SAFs grown via magnetron sputtering varying the ferromagnetic layers and spacer thickness. Interestingly, we observe a strong, reversible modulation of the exchange field, saturation field, and coupling strength upon heating up to 250 °C. These results suggest that exchange bias SAFs represent promising systems for developing novel artificial magnetic nanomaterials via localized thermal treatment.
Impact of human papillomavirus vaccination on rates of abnormal cervical cytology and histology in young New Zealand women.

AIM Determine the impact of quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination on abnormal cervical cytology and histology rates in young New Zealand women. METHODS Retrospective population-based cohort study of women born 1990-1994, with a cervical cytology or histology recorded when aged 20-24 between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2015. Data was obtained through linking the National Immunisation Register and National Cervical Screening Programme Register. RESULTS N=104,313 women (376,402 person years of follow up) were included. The incidence of high-grade cytology was lower in vaccinated women (at least one dose prior to 18 years) than in unvaccinated women (8.5 vs 11.3 per 1,000 person years [p1000py], incidence rate ratio [IRR 0.75], 95% CI 0.70, 0.80, p<.001). The incidence of high-grade histology was lower in vaccinated women than in unvaccinated women (6.0 vs 8.7 p1000py, IRR 0.69, 95% CI 0.64, 0.75, p<.001). There was no evidence of a difference in the incidence of high-grade histology between European and Māori women overall or after taking vaccination status into account. CONCLUSIONS Receiving at least one dose of quadrivalent HPV vaccine prior to 18 years was associated with a 25% lower incidence of high-grade cytology and 31% lower incidence of high-grade histology in women aged 20-24 years.
Performance Assessment of Sub-Daily and Daily Precipitation Estimates Derived from GPM and GSMaP Products over an Arid Environment

Precipitation is a critical variable for comprehending various climate-related research, such as water resources management, flash flood monitoring and forecasting, climatic analyses, and hydrogeological studies, etc. Here, our objective was to evaluate the rainfall estimates obtained from Global Precipitation Mission (GPM), and Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) constellation over an arid environment like the Sultanate of Oman that is characterized by a complex topography and extremely variable rainfall patterns. Global Satellite-based Precipitation Estimates (GSPEs) can provide wide coverage and high spatial and temporal resolutions, but evaluating their accuracy is a mandatory step before involving them in different hydrological applications. In this paper, the reliability of the Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for the GPM (IMERG) V04 and GSMaP V06 products were evaluated using the reference in-situ rain gauges at sub-daily (e.g., 6, 12, and 18 h) and daily time scales during the period of March 2014–December 2016. A set of continuous difference statistical indices (e.g., mean absolute difference, root mean square error, mean difference, and unconditional bias), and categorical metrics (e.g., probability of detection, critical success index, false alarm ratio, and frequency bias index) were used to evaluate recorded precipitation occurrences. The results showed that the five GSPEs could generally delineate the spatial and temporal patterns of rainfall while they might have over- and under-estimations of in-situ gauge measurements. The overall quality of the GSMaP runs was superior to the IMERG products; however, it also encountered an exaggeration in case of light rain and an underestimation for heavy rain. The effects of the gauge calibration algorithm (GCA) used in the final IMERG (IMERG-F) were investigated by comparison with early and late runs. The IMERG-F V04 product did not show a significant improvement over the early (i.e., after 4 h of rainfall observations) and late (i.e., after 12 h of rainfall observations) products. The results indicated that GCA could not reduce the missed precipitation records considerably.
The Effect Sizes of PPARγ rs1801282, FTO rs9939609, and MC4R rs2229616 Variants on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Risk among the Western Saudi Population: A Cross-Sectional Prospective Study

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a common polygenic disease with associated comorbidities. Obesity is a major risk factor for the development of T2DM. The aim of this study is to determine the allele and genotype frequency of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) rs1801282, fat mass and obesity-associated protein (FTO) rs9939609, and melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) rs2229616 polymorphisms and their association with risk of T2DM in the western Saudi population as mediators of adiposity phenotypes. In a cross-sectional prospective study, genomic DNA from control and T2DM patients were isolated and genotyped for these single-nucleotide polymorphisms. There was a significant association of the MC4R rs2229616 variant with T2DM, but no association with T2DM was detected with PPARγ rs1801282 or FTO rs9939609. The combination of C/C for PPARγ rs1801282, A/A for FTO rs9939609, and C/C for MC4R rs2229616 increased the risk of T2DM by 1.82. The A/T genotype for FTO rs9939609 was predicted to decrease the risk of T2DM when combined with C/C for PPARγ rs1801282 and C/C for MC4R rs2229616 or C/C for PPARγ rs1801282 and C/T MC4R rs2229616. In conclusion, our study showed the risk of the assessed variants for the development of T2DM in the Saudi population.
Development and validation of the Child and Adolescent Flexible Expressiveness (CAFE) Scale.

Expressive flexibility, or the ease with which one can switch between enhancing and suppressing emotional behavior in line with situational demands, appears to be an adaptive skill for promoting psychological well-being for adults. However, this construct has rarely been explored among children and adolescents. To facilitate such investigations, the present study developed and validated a scenario-based, self-reported measurement tool that tests youth's expressive flexibility, namely the Child and Adolescent Flexible Expressiveness (CAFE) Scale. Results from Study 1 (N = 549) and Study 2 (N = 248) supported a two-factor structure (expressive enhancement and expressive suppression), identifying eligible items through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The measurement invariance of the scale was also evidenced via a series of multigroup tests across sex and age groups. Additionally, both subscales showed adequate internal consistencies, and the CAFE scores related to most theoretically similar measures (emotion expressivity and internal emotion regulation) and clinical outcome variables (e.g., depression, problem behavior), as expected. Study 3 (N = 199) further compared CAFE scores to children's observed emotion expressivity in a standardized laboratory task. Results indicated that CAFE enhancement and suppression scores significantly predicted respective performances in the task. Finally, Study 4 (N = 48) demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability of the CAFE Scale by retesting a subsample of participants from Study 1. Generally, the CAFE Scale appears to be a reliable and valid measurement in the area of emotion regulation, which allows convenient clinical assessment of children's and adolescents' expressive flexibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Evaluation of Thyroid Dysfunction in Type II Diabetes Mellitus: A Case Control Study.

Diabetes Mellitus is a leading cause of death in developing countries like India. Diabetes Mellitus and Thyroid Disorders are two main endocrine disorders interrelated to each other and encountered in clinical practice. Their correlation is poorly understood. The present study was undertaken to understand the associated trend of thyroid dysfunction with diabetic process by monitoring blood glucose Thyroid Hormones T3, T4, and TSH. 116 adult patients of age more than 45 years attending the diabetes OPD of MGM Medical College and Hospital were studied for thyroid parameters and blood glucose levels. Out of 116 patients, 58 (50%) patients had Diabetes Mellitus (Type II) 05 were hypothyroid (incidence 8.6.0%) subclinical hypothyroidism seen in 13 patients So the incidence {22.4%} . The remaining 58 patients having normal blood glucose level (non diabetic) were considered as control group. Serum T3 and T4 concentration were low and TSH was high as compared to control group . But significant difference was found with T3 and TSH only. Type II Diabetes Mellitus were at risk for development of subclinical hypothyroidism or vice versa and hence to followed up regularly for thyroid profile.
Social and Governance Implications of Improved Data Efficiency

Many researchers work on improving the data efficiency of machine learning. What would happen if they succeed? This paper explores the social-economic impact of increased data efficiency. Specifically, we examine the intuition that data efficiency will erode the barriers to entry protecting incumbent data-rich AI firms, exposing them to more competition from data-poor firms. We find that this intuition is only partially correct: data efficiency makes it easier to create ML applications, but large AI firms may have more to gain from higher performing AI systems. Further, we find that the effect on privacy, data markets, robustness, and misuse are complex. For example, while it seems intuitive that misuse risk would increase along with data efficiency -- as more actors gain access to any level of capability -- the net effect crucially depends on how much defensive measures are improved. More investigation into data efficiency, as well as research into the "AI production function", will be key to understanding the development of the AI industry and its societal impacts.
Carotid Intima-Media Thickness and the Risk of First Stroke in Patients With Hypertension

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background and Purpose— This study aimed to investigate the association between mean carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) and the risk of first stroke and examine any possible effect modifiers in patients with hypertension. Methods— A total of 11 547 hypertensive participants without history of stroke from the CSPPT (China Stroke Primary Prevention Trial) were included in this analysis. The primary outcome was first stroke. Results— Over a median follow-up of 4.4 years, 726 first strokes were identified, of which 631 were ischemic, and 90 were hemorrhagic. A per SD increase in mean cIMT was positively associated with the risk of first stroke (hazard ratio [HR], 1.11 [95% CI, 1.03–1.20]), and first ischemic stroke (HR, 1.10 [95% CI, 1.01–1.20]). Moreover, when cIMT was categorized in quartiles, the higher risks of first stroke (HR, 1.31 [95% CI, 1.06–1.61]) and first hemorrhagic stroke (HR, 2.25 [95% CI, 1.11–4.58]) were found in participants in quartile 2 to 4 (≥0.66 mm), compared with those in quartile 1 (<0.66 mm). More importantly, the cIMT-first stroke association was significantly stronger in participants with higher mean arterial pressure (≥109.3 [quintile 5] versus <109.3 mm Hg, P-interaction=0.024) or diastolic blood pressure levels (≥90.7 [quintile 5] versus <90.7 mm Hg, P-interaction=0.009). Conclusions— There was a significant positive association between baseline cIMT and the risk of first stroke in patients with hypertension. This association was even stronger among those with higher mean arterial pressure or diastolic blood pressure levels.
AGA Technical Review on the Management of Moderate to Severe Ulcerative Colitis.

A subset of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) present with, or progress to, moderate to severe disease activity. These patients are at high-risk for colectomy, hospitalization, corticosteroid-dependence, and serious infections. The risk of life-threatening complications and emergency colectomy is particularly high among those patients hospitalized with acute severe ulcerative colitis (ASUC). Optimal management of outpatients or inpatients with moderate-severe UC often requires the use of immunomodulator and/or biologic therapies including thiopurines, methotrexate, cyclosporine, tacrolimus, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α antagonists, vedolizumab, tofacitnib or ustekinumab, either as monotherapy, or in combination (with immunomodulators), to mitigate these risks. Decisions about optimal drug therapy in moderate-severe UC are complex, with limited guidance on comparative efficacy and safety of different treatments, leading to considerable practice variability. Therefore, the American Gastroenterological Association prioritized development of clinical guidelines on this topic. To inform the clinical guidelines, this technical review was completed in accordance with the GRADE framework. Focused questions in adult outpatients with moderate-severe UC included: (1) overall and comparative efficacy of different medications for induction and maintenance of remission in patients with or without prior exposure to TNF-α antagonists, (2) comparative efficacy and safety of biologic monotherapy vs. combination therapy with immunomodulators, (3) comparative efficacy of top-down (upfront use of biologics and/or immunomodulator therapy) vs. step-up therapy (acceleration to biologic and/or immunomodulator therapy only after failure of 5-aminosalicylates), and (4) role of continuing vs. stopping 5-aminosalicylates in patients being treated with immunomodulator and/or biologic therapy for moderate-severe UC. Focused questions in adults hospitalized with ASUC included: (5) overall and comparative efficacy of pharmacological interventions for inpatients refractory to corticosteroids, in reducing risk of colectomy, (6) optimal dosing regimens for intravenous corticosteroids and infliximab in these patients and (7) role of adjunctive antibiotics in the absence of confirmed infections.
A bifunctional salvage pathway for two distinct S‐adenosylmethionine by‐products that is widespread in bacteria, including pathogenic Escherichia coli

S‐adenosyl‐l‐methionine (SAM) is a necessary cosubstrate for numerous essential enzymatic reactions including protein and nucleotide methylations, secondary metabolite synthesis and radical‐mediated processes. Radical SAM enzymes produce 5ʹ‐deoxyadenosine, and SAM‐dependent enzymes for polyamine, neurotransmitter and quorum sensing compound synthesis produce 5ʹ‐methylthioadenosine as by‐products. Both are inhibitory and must be addressed by all cells. This work establishes a bifunctional oxygen‐independent salvage pathway for 5ʹ‐deoxyadenosine and 5ʹ‐methylthioadenosine in both Rhodospirillum rubrum and Extraintestinal Pathogenic Escherichia coli. Homologous genes for this pathway are widespread in bacteria, notably pathogenic strains within several families. A phosphorylase (Rhodospirillum rubrum) or separate nucleoside and kinase (Escherichia coli) followed by an isomerase and aldolase sequentially function to salvage these two wasteful and inhibitory compounds into adenine, dihydroxyacetone phosphate and acetaldehyde or (2‐methylthio)acetaldehyde during both aerobic and anaerobic growth. Both SAM by‐products are metabolized with equal affinity during aerobic and anaerobic growth conditions, suggesting that the dual‐purpose salvage pathway plays a central role in numerous environments, notably the human body during infection. Our newly discovered bifunctional oxygen‐independent pathway, widespread in bacteria, salvages at least two by‐products of SAM‐dependent enzymes for carbon and sulfur salvage, contributing to cell growth.
Improving GANs for Speech Enhancement

Generative adversarial networks (GAN) have recently been shown to be efficient for speech enhancement. However, most, if not all, existing speech enhancement GANs (SEGAN) make use of a single generator to perform one-stage enhancement mapping. In this work, we propose to use multiple generators that are chained to perform multi-stage enhancement mapping, which gradually refines the noisy input signals in a stage-wise fashion. Furthermore, we study two scenarios: (1) the generators share their parameters and (2) the generators’ parameters are independent. The former constrains the generators to learn a common mapping that is iteratively applied at all enhancement stages and results in a small model footprint. On the contrary, the latter allows the generators to flexibly learn different enhancement mappings at different stages of the network at the cost of an increased model size. We demonstrate that the proposed multi-stage enhancement approach outperforms the one-stage SEGAN baseline, where the independent generators lead to more favorable results than the tied generators. The source code is available at http://github.com/pquochuy/idsegan.
Blood rheology biomarkers in sickle cell disease

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common inherited blood disorder, affecting approximately 100,000 patients in the U.S. and millions more worldwide. Patients with SCD experience a wide range of clinical complications, including frequent pain crises, stroke, and early mortality, all originating from a single-point mutation in the β-globin subunit. The RBC changes resulting from the sickle mutation lead to a host of rheological abnormalities that diminish microvascular blood flow, and produce severe anemia due to RBC hemolysis, and ischemia from vaso-occlusion initiated by sticky, rigid sickle RBCs. While the pathophysiology and mechanisms of SCD have been investigated for many years, therapies to treat the disease are limited. In addition to RBC transfusion, there are only two US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs to ameliorate SCD complications: hydroxyurea (HU) and L-glutamine (Endari™). The only curative therapy currently available is allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), which is generally reserved for individuals with a matched related donor, comprising only 10–15% of the total SCD population. Potentially curative advanced gene therapy approaches for SCD are under investigation in ongoing clinical trials. The ultimate goal of any curative treatment should be to repair the hemorheological abnormalities caused by SCD, and thus normalize blood flow and prevent clinical complications. Our mini-review highlights a set of key hemorheological biomarkers (and the current and emerging technologies used to measure them) that may be used to guide the development of novel curative and palliative therapies for SCD, and functionally assess outcomes. Impact statement Severe impairment of blood rheology is the hallmark of SCD pathophysiology, and one of the key factors predisposing SCD patients to pain crises, organ damage, and early mortality. As novel therapies emerge to treat or cure SCD, it is crucial that these treatments are functionally evaluated for their effect on blood rheology. This review describes a comprehensive panel of rheological biomarkers, their clinical uses, and the technologies used to obtain them. The described technologies can produce highly sensitive measurements of the ability of current treatments to improve blood rheology of SCD patients. The goal of curative therapies should be to achieve blood rheology biomarkers measurements in the range of sickle cell trait individuals (HbAS). The use of the panel of rheological biomarkers proposed in this review could significantly accelerate the development, optimization, and clinical translation of novel therapies for SCD.
Substitution of Ag for Cu in Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4: Toward Wide Band Gap Absorbers with Low Antisite Defects for Thin Film Solar Cells

Cation substitution is a promising approach to reduce the antisite defects and further improve the efficiency of Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTSSe) cells. In this paper, silver (Ag) has been introduced into Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTSSe) thin film to replace Cu partially and form (Cu1-xAgx)2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) (CAZTSSe) alloy films by combination of solution method and a rapid annealing technique. The fundamental properties of the mixed Ag-Cu kesterite compound are systematically reported as a function of the Ag/(Ag+Cu) ratio. The results show that band gap of kesterite CAZTSSe is incessantly increased by adjusting the Ag doping content, indicating that the CAZTSSe alloy film is a potentially applicable bandgap grading absorption layers material to obtain higher CZTSSe device. Furthermore, CAZTSSe alloy films with better electrical performance were also obtained by adjusting the Ag content during film fabrication. Finally, we also observed an increment in open circuit voltage (Voc) by 160 mV and an accompanying rise in device efficiency from 4.24 to 5.95%. The improvement is correlated to the improved grain size and decreased antisite defects of Cu instead of Zn site (CuZn) in the lattice. The Voc enhancement evidences that the solution method is facile and viable to achieve proper cation substitution toward higher efficiency kesterite solar cells. In addition, the CAZTSSe cell also displays better charge collection performance because of the higher fill factor (FF) and power conversion efficiency (PCE). Therefore, it can be concluded that the doping of Ag is a potentially appropriate method to reduce the Cuzn antisite defects of CZTSSe and improve efficiency of CZTSSe device.