Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bicalutamide does not raise transaminases in comparison to alternative anti-androgen regimens among transfeminine adolescents and young adults: a retrospective cohort study

Background: Bicalutamide is a potential anti-androgen for transgender individuals with feminizing embodiment goals, but use has been limited because of hepatotoxicity in cisgender men with prostate cancer. This study compared transaminase changes in transfeminine adolescents and young adults (AYA) using low-dose bicalutamide with individuals using other methods of androgen blockade. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted using electronic health record data for patients starting gender affirming hormone therapy with at least 10 months of follow-up data between 2015 and 2023. Linear mixed models compared change in ALT and AST from baseline and maximum ALT and AST values in bicalutamide and comparison groups. Secondary outcomes included % individuals with ALT and AST elevation more than 1, 2, or 3 times the upper limit of normal (ULN) (Fisher's exact test), standardized mean estradiol dose by group (t test), and Tanner staging of breast tissue by group (Fisher's exact test). Results: Eighty-four transfeminine AYA (median age 18) taking bicalutamide were compared to 69 transfeminine AYA (median age 19) taking GnRH agonists, spironolactone or no agent in addition to estradiol. In linear mixed models adjusted for baseline age, BMI, baseline ALT or AST, and alcohol use, there was no difference in delta or maximum ALT or AST in bicalutamide and comparison groups. No individuals had an AST or ALT level > 3x ULN. Estradiol doses and Tanner stages were similar between groups in a subgroup analysis of individuals receiving pediatric care. Conclusion: Bicalutamide was not associated with significant change in transaminases as compared with other anti-androgen regimens over one year. Bicalutamide appears to be a safe anti-androgen for transfeminine individuals at low dose with close monitoring and deserves further study.
The Destruction of Heritage

The destruction of rock art in the Burrup Peninsula, performed by several mammoth industries strategically located in the Peninsula since the 1960s, allows me to analyse the concept of heritage within a global history of art and find meaning in the difficult task of interpreting rock art. The Burrup Peninsula not only hosts the largest rock art site in the world, but also one of the largest deposits of natural gas, iron ore and salt. As a consequence, the land (sacred to the Indigenous people), becomes extremely important in order to sustain the booming economy of Australia. In this difficult negotiation between heritage and progress the rock art is embedded with new meanings and the heritage becomes ephemeral. Failing to include the site in the World Heritage Site list created by UNESCO, the roles of identity and memory are contested by the two groups represented on each side of the debate: on one hand, the Aboriginal Traditional owners and the archaeologists; on the other, the Australian government and the cultural establishment that denies the rock art an aesthetic significance by considering it “primitive” and “archaic”. The debate becomes even more pertinent after realizing that the Australian government has flagged other buildings and natural parks as World Heritage Sites, while the rock art in the Burrup Peninsula is catalogued as national, but not World, Heritage. As a result, the concept of heritage can be defined on several levels: local, regional, national and international.
Middle and Late Campanian (Late Cretaceous) Ammonoids from the Urakawa Area, Hokkaido, Northern Japan

Abstract. Twelve species of middle and late Campanian (Late Cretaceous) ammonoids, of which one is a newly described species, are reported from the Chinomigawa Formation of the Yezo Group in the Urakawa area, southern central Hokkaido, northern Japan. Furthermore, two ammonoid biozones, the Metaplacenticeras subtilistriatum and Baculites subanceps in ascending order, are recognized. Zircon radiometric ages reveal that the ages of tuffs immediately below the B. subanceps Zone are 75.1±0.9 Ma and 76.0±1.3 Ma respectively, which infer an early late Campanian age. Therefore, the Metaplacenticeras subtilistriatum and Baculites subanceps zones correlate with the upper middle Campanian and lower upper Campanian, respectively. The latter zone is probably a correlative of the lower part of the Didymoceras sp. Zone of the Izumi Group in Southwest Japan because of the discovery of the herein newly described species, Didymoceras hidakense Shigeta sp. nov. Since Didymoceras and Baculites subanceps flourished in other regions during late middle Campanian time, their occurrence in the Urakawa area suggests that they extended their geographic distribution from other areas to the Northwest Pacific region in early late Campanian time.
Burial and exhumation of the western border of the Ukrainian Shield (Podolia): a multi‐disciplinary approach

The Podolia region is located along the western border of the Eastern European Craton, which is also known as Ukrainian Shield. From the Ordovician to the Miocene, this area formed part of an epicontinental basin system. In order to investigate the effects of orogenic cycles occurring along the plate margin, a multi‐disciplinary approach was used in this study. Paleotemperature analysis and low‐temperature thermochronometry were combined with stratigraphic data to obtain a burial model for the Paleozoic succession exposed in the study area. Maximum burial for Silurian and Devonian rocks occurred during the Devonian and Early Carboniferous at depths of 4–5 km, as constrained by vitrinite reflectance and illite content in mixed illite‐smectite layers. Thermochronometric data indicate that exhumation through the 45–120 °C temperature range took place between the Late Triassic and the Early Jurassic, and that no significant burial occurred afterwards (temperatures characterising the stratigraphically lowermost units remaining below ca. 60 °C). These results point to a major exhumation event coeval with the Cimmerian orogenesis, which took place a few hundreds of kilometres away from the study area. On the other hand, no significant effect of the Alpine orogenesis was recorded, although the collisional front was located <100 km from the Podolia region. This work shows how paleothermal and thermochronometric analyses can be successfully integrated with stratigraphic data to reconstruct the burial history, and how the burial history of a basin located on a plate margin can, in some cases, be independent from the distance of the margin from the collisional fronts.
CSI-Microbes: Identifying cell-type specific intracellular microbes from single-cell RNA-seq data

Despite recent reports of microbes living within tumor cells, the identification of intracellular microbes remains an open and important challenge. Here we introduce CSI-Microbes (computational identification of C ell type S pecific I ntracellular Microbes ), a computational approach for the discovery of cell-type specific intracellular microbial taxa from single-cell RNA sequencing of host cells. It is first validated on two gold-standard datasets of human immune cells exposed to Salmonella . Next, CSI-Microbes is tested on Merkel cell and colorectal carcinoma where it identifies both reported and previously unknown tumor-specific intracellular microbes. Finally, CSI-Microbes is applied to analyze the intracellular microbiome of thirteen lung tumors where it identifies four tumors with bacterial taxa enriched in tumor cells and two tumors with bacterial taxa enriched in stroma or immune cells. Notably, the infected tumor cells down-regulate pathways associated with anti-microbial response and antigen processing and presentation, testifying to the functional significance of bacterial presence.
Diversity, indigenous uses and conservation status of medicinal plants in Manali wildlife sanctuary, North western Himalaya

In the moutaineous regions human populations are dependent on plants for their sustenance particularly for medicine. In India, more than 95% of the total medicinal plants used in preparing medicines by various industries are harvested from wild. There is a great need to recognise the potential of bioresources at their fullest. Therefore, the present study focused to assess the medicinal plants diversity in Manali wildlife sanctuary of North western Himalaya, identify species preference, native, endemic and threatened medicinal plants and suggests conservation measures. A total of 270 medicinal plants belonging to 84 families and 197 genera were recorded. Maximum medicinal plants were reported in the altitudinal zone, 2000-2800 m and decreased with increasing altitude. Out of the total, 162 medicinal plants were native and 98 were endemic to the Himalayan region. Maximum species were used for stomach problems, followed by skin, eyes, blood and liver problems. Thirty seven species were identified as threatened. Dactylorhiza hatagirea, Aconitum heterophyllum, Arnebia benthamii, Lilium polyphyllum, Swertia chirayita, Podophyllum hexandrum, Jurinella macrocephala, Taxus baccata subsp. wallichiana, etc. were highly preferred species and continuous extraction from the wild for trade has increased pressure which may cause extinction of these species in near future. Identification of active ingredients and mass multiplication of the potential species have been suggested in view of economic importance. Regular monitoring of populations and habitats of threatened medicinal plants, restricted harvesting and habitat protection are suggested.
A Framework for Modeling and Interpreting Patient Subgroups Applied to Hospital Readmission: Visual Analytical Approach

Background: A primary goal of precision medicine is to identify patient subgroups and infer their underlying disease processes with the aim of designing targeted interventions. Although several studies have identified patient subgroups, there is a considerable gap between the identification of patient subgroups and their modeling and interpretation for clinical applications. Objective: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a novel analytical framework for modeling and interpreting patient subgroups (MIPS) using a 3-step modeling approach: visual analytical modeling to automatically identify patient subgroups and their co-occurring comorbidities and determine their statistical significance and clinical interpretability; classification modeling to classify patients into subgroups and measure its accuracy; and prediction modeling to predict a patient’s risk of an adverse outcome and compare its accuracy with and without patient subgroup information. Methods: The MIPS framework was developed using bipartite networks to identify patient subgroups based on frequently co-occurring high-risk comorbidities, multinomial logistic regression to classify patients into subgroups, and hierarchical logistic regression to predict the risk of an adverse outcome using subgroup membership compared with standard logistic regression without subgroup membership. The MIPS framework was evaluated for 3 hospital readmission conditions: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure (CHF), and total hip arthroplasty/total knee
Learning from a Black Box

We study how a decision maker learns when she does not know how recommendations are generated. We introduce three types of behavioral postulates on the updating rule. Some of them characterize the contraction rule. The contraction rule maps each recommendation to its trustworthiness and to one belief consistent with the recommendation, and forms the posterior by mixing the prior with the recommended belief weighted by the trustworthiness measure. Under some other postulates, the updating rule features a form of conservatism. No updating rules, however, can satisfy all the postulates simultaneously. Applications with persistent recency bias and belief divergence are provided. ∗Department of Economics, University of Michigan. Email: shaoweik@umich.edu. †Strategy Department, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Email: wux@umich.edu. ‡Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong. Email: czhao@hku.hk. §We are grateful to David Ahn, Tilman Börgers, David Dillenberger, Matthew Kovach, Heng Liu, Yang Lu, David Miller, Gerelt Tserenjigmid, and seminar and conference participants at UMich, Toronto, Hitotsubashi Summer Institute, Midwest Economic Theory Conference (MSU), SMU, Virginia Tech, HKUST, UCSC, UT Austin, QUB, PSU, Princeton, ANU, IMSI Decision Making under Uncertainty, Copenhagen Business School, INSEAD, and USC Marshall for helpful discussions.
DISSOLVED AND GASEOUS FLUXES OF CARBON AND NITROGEN FROM URBAN WATERSHEDS OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

Title of Document: DISSOLVED AND GASEOUS FLUXES OF CARBON AND NITROGEN FROM URBAN WATERSHEDS OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY Rose Marie Smith, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Directed By: Associate Professor, Sujay S. Kaushal, Department of Geology Carbon and nitrogen loading to streams and rivers contributes to eutrophication as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) production in streams, rivers and estuaries. My dissertation consists of three research chapters, which examine interactions and potential trade-offs between water quality and greenhouse gas production in urban streams of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. My first research project focused on drivers of carbon export and quality in an urbanized river. I found that watershed carbon sources (soils and leaves) contributed more than in-stream production to overall carbon export, but that periods of high in-stream productivity were important over seasonal and daily timescales. My second research chapter examined the influence of urban storm-water and sanitary infrastructure on dissolved and gaseous carbon and nitrogen concentrations in headwater streams. Gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O) were consistently super-saturated throughout the course of a year. N2O concentrations in streams draining septic systems were within the high range of previously published values. Total dissolved nitrogen concentration was positively correlated with CO2 and N2O and negatively correlated with CH4. My third research chapter examined a long-term (15-year) record of GHG emissions from soils in rural forests, urban forest, and urban lawns in Baltimore, MD. CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions showed positive correlations with temperature at each site. Lawns were a net source of CH4 + N2O, whereas forests were net sinks. Gross CO2 fluxes were also highest in lawns, in part due to elevated growing-season temperatures. While land cover influences GHG emissions from soils, the overall role of land cover on this flux is very small (< 0.5%) compared with gases released from anthropogenic sources, according to a recent GHG budget of the Baltimore metropolitan area, where this study took place. DISSOLVED AND GASEOUS FLUXES OF CARBON AND NITROGEN FROM URBAN WATERSHEDS OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY
On Non-Preemptive VM Scheduling in the Cloud

We study the problem of scheduling VMs (Virtual Machines) in a distributed server platform, motivated by cloud computing applications. The VMs arrive dynamically over time to the system, and require a certain amount of resources (e.g. memory, CPU, etc) for the duration of their service. To avoid costly preemptions, we consider non-preemptive scheduling: Each VM has to be assigned to a server which has enough residual capacity to accommodate it, and once a VM is assigned to a server, its service cannot be disrupted (preempted). Prior approaches to this problem either have high complexity, require synchronization among the servers, or yield queue sizes/delays which are excessively large. We propose a non-preemptive scheduling algorithm that resolves these issues. In general, given an approximation algorithm to Knapsack with approximation ratio r, our scheduling algorithm can provide rβ fraction of the throughput region for β < r. In the special case of a greedy approximation algorithm to Knapsack, we further show that this condition can be relaxed to β<1. The parameters β and r can be tuned to provide a trade-off between achievable throughput, delay, and computational complexity of the scheduling algorithm. Finally extensive simulation results using both synthetic and real traffic traces are presented to verify the performance of our algorithm.
Object-Oriented Modeling and Design for Database Applications

1. Introduction. I. MODELING CONCEPTS. 2. Basic Object Modeling. 3. Advanced Object Modeling. 4. Object Metamodeling. 5. Functional Modeling. II. ANALYSIS AND DESIGN PROCESS. 6. Process Preview. 7. Conceptualization. 8. Analysis. 9. System Design. 10. Detailed Design. 11. Process Review. III. IMPLEMENTATION. 12. Files. 13. Relational Databases: Basics. 14. Relational Databases: Advanced. 15. Object-Oriented Databases: Basics. 16. Object-Oriented Databases: Advanced. 17. Implementation Review. IV. LARGE SYSTEM ISSUES. 18. Distributed Databases. 19. Integration of Applications. 20. Reverse Engineering. Appendix A. Glossary. Appendix B. BNF Grammar for the ONN. Index.
Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series N ° 08 – 24 Repo Markets , Counterparty Risk , and the 2007 / 2008 Liquidity Crisis

A standard repurchase agreement between two counterparties is considered to examine the endogenous choice of collateral, the feasibility of secured lending, and welfare implications of the central bank’s collateral framework. As an innovation, we allow for two-sided counterparty risk. In line with empirical observations, it is shown that the most liquid and least risky assets are used as collateral in market transactions first. An endogenous opportunity cost arises from using liquid collateral with the central bank. Conditions are identified such that expected utility increases for all market participants when the central bank accepts a broader range of assets as collateral. JEL classification: G21, E51.
Explaining the Global Digital Divide: Economic, Political and Sociological Drivers of Cross-National Internet Use

We argue that the global digital divide, as measured by cross-national differences in Internet use, is the result of the economic, regulatory and sociopolitical characteristics of countries and their evolution over time. We predict Internet use to increase with world-system status, privatization and competition in the telecommunications sector, democracy and cosmopolitanism. Using data on 118 countries from 1997 through 2001, we find relatively robust support for each of our hypotheses. We conclude by exploring the implications of this new, powerful communication medium for the global political economy and for the spread of democracy around the world.
Forschungsberichte der Fakultät IV – Elektrotechnik und Informatik Onthe-Fly Construction , Correctness and Completeness of Model Transformations based on Triple Graph Grammars : Long Version

Triple graph grammars (TGGs) are a formal and intuitive concept for the specification of model transformations. Their main advantage is an automatic derivation of operational rules for bidirectional model transformations, which simplifies specification and enhances usability as well as consistency. In this paper we continue previous work on the formal definition of model transformations based on triple graph rules with negative application conditions (NACs). The new notion of partial source consistency enables us to construct consistent model transformations on-the-fly instead of analyzing consistency of completed model transformations. We show the crucial properties termination, correctness and completeness (including NAC-consistency) for the model transformations resulting from our construction. Moreover, we define parallel independence for model transformation steps which allows us to perform partial-order reduction in order to improve efficiency. The results are applicable to several relevant model transformations and in particular to our example transformation from class diagrams to database models.
Estimation of the Voicing Cut-Off Frequency Contour Based on a Cumulative Harmonicity Score

We present a new algorithm for the estimation of the voicing cut-off frequency (VCO), i.e., the frequency that separates the harmonic low-frequency part from the aperiodic high-frequency part in voiced speech. The VCO is estimated as the frequency for which the sum of the harmonicity scores of all pitch harmonics below that frequency is maximized. The algorithm is combined with a powerful dynamic programming approach to track the VCO estimates over time. Remarkably accurate and smooth VCO contours are obtained, despite the simplicity of the algorithm. Applications include a.o. (sinusoidal) speech modeling, coding, and synthesis, as well as harmonic speech analysis for, e.g., automatic speech recognition.
Design for Attachment : an explorative search for product qualities that enhance our emotional bond with digital products

• A submitted manuscript is the author's version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
Stability of quartic functional equations in 2-Banach space

In this paper, we investigate the generalized Hyers-Ulam stability of the functional equation f(2x + y) + f(2x − y) = 4f(x + y) + 4f(x − y) + 24f(x) − 6f(y) in 2-Banach space. Mathematics Subject Classification: 39B82, 46B99
Demythization of Structural XML Query Processing: Comparison of Holistic and Binary Approaches, Technical Report

XML query can be modeled by twig pattern query (TPQ) specifying predicates on XML nodes and XPath relationships satisfied between them. A lot of TPQ types have been proposed; this paper takes into account a TPQ model extended by a specification of output and non-output query nodes since it complies with the XQuery semantics and, in many cases, it leads to a more efficient query processing. In general, there are two approaches to process the TPQ: holistic joins and binary joins. Whereas the binary join approach builds a query plan as a tree of interconnected binary operators, the holistic join approach evaluates a whole query using one operator (i.e., using one complex algorithm). Surprisingly, a thorough analytical and experimental comparison is still missing despite an enormous research effort in this area. In this paper, we try to fill this gap; we analytically and experimentally show that the binary joins used in a fully-pipelined plan (i.e., the plan where each join operation does not wait for the complete result of the previous operation and no explicit sorting is used) can often outperform the holistic joins, especially for TPQs with a higher ratio of non-output query nodes. The main contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows: (i) we introduce several improvements of existing binary join approaches allowing to build a fully-pipelined plan for a TPQ considering non-output query nodes, (ii) we prove that for a certain class of TPQs such a plan has the linear time complexity with respect to the size of the input and output as well as the linear space complexity with respect to the XML document depth (i.e., the same complexity as the holistic join approaches), (iii) we show that our improved binary join approach outperforms the holistic join approaches in many situations, and (iv) we propose a simple combined approach that uses advantages of both types of approaches.