Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Semantic Data Set Construction from Human Clustering and Spatial Arrangement

Abstract Research into representation learning models of lexical semantics usually utilizes some form of intrinsic evaluation to ensure that the learned representations reflect human semantic judgments. Lexical semantic similarity estimation is a widely used evaluation method, but efforts have typically focused on pairwise judgments of words in isolation, or are limited to specific contexts and lexical stimuli. There are limitations with these approaches that either do not provide any context for judgments, and thereby ignore ambiguity, or provide very specific sentential contexts that cannot then be used to generate a larger lexical resource. Furthermore, similarity between more than two items is not considered. We provide a full description and analysis of our recently proposed methodology for large-scale data set construction that produces a semantic classification of a large sample of verbs in the first phase, as well as multi-way similarity judgments made within the resultant semantic classes in the second phase. The methodology uses a spatial multi-arrangement approach proposed in the field of cognitive neuroscience for capturing multi-way similarity judgments of visual stimuli. We have adapted this method to handle polysemous linguistic stimuli and much larger samples than previous work. We specifically target verbs, but the method can equally be applied to other parts of speech. We perform cluster analysis on the data from the first phase and demonstrate how this might be useful in the construction of a comprehensive verb resource. We also analyze the semantic information captured by the second phase and discuss the potential of the spatially induced similarity judgments to better reflect human notions of word similarity. We demonstrate how the resultant data set can be used for fine-grained analyses and evaluation of representation learning models on the intrinsic tasks of semantic clustering and semantic similarity. In particular, we find that stronger static word embedding methods still outperform lexical representations emerging from more recent pre-training methods, both on word-level similarity and clustering. Moreover, thanks to the data set’s vast coverage, we are able to compare the benefits of specializing vector representations for a particular type of external knowledge by evaluating FrameNet- and VerbNet-retrofitted models on specific semantic domains such as “Heat” or “Motion. ”
Prostate Cancer: People Transforming A Diagnosis, A Diagnosis Transforming People

Prostatic specific antigen (PSA) screening has been controversial since its inception. Controversy has persisted despite more and higher quality clinical evidence. Attention to lead and length time biases, overdiagnosis, overtreatment, medicalisation, iatrogenesis and financial conflict of interest has had limited impact. I undertook a social history of the prostate cancer diagnosis to reassess the causes of controversy and suggest different clinical and policy responses. For much of the twentieth century, clinicians were uninterested in early detection and radical treatment, believing that cancers revealed after obstruction-relieving surgery or autopsy could be ignored. In 1985, the FDA approved PSA diagnostic tests, which rapidly catalysed two self-reinforcing cycles of action and perception. One occurred when the increased diagnoses made the disease more prevalent and feared, and efforts at prevention and treatment seem more efficacious, leading to more screening, and so on. The other cycle occurred among men with screening detected cancer who initially eschewed radical treatments or imagined doing so, whose lives were often consumed with fear and surveillance, increasing demand for radical cures. This history underscores the need for novel clinical and policy responses to the looping effects—self-reinforcing cycles of action and perception—which can radically transform so much of what we believe and do about disease.
Why Does Cancer Screening Persist Despite the Potential to Harm?

Population screening for early-stage cancer or cancer precursors began in the mid-twentieth century, with the goal of reducing suffering from cancer illness and lengthening average life by preventing cancer deaths. Since the establishment of cancer screening, concerns have emerged that it may be doing considerable harm; despite this, screening practices have remained relatively intractable. This intractability in the face of harm is the central problematic of my analysis. I reinterpret a large study of breast, cervical and prostate cancer screening completed recently by our Australian research group, working across empirical bioethics, public health and social science. I suggest three reasons why cancer screening might persist as it does, and thus reach conclusions about what might be required to make cancer screening systems more responsive to the potential for harm.
“Thanks for hearing me out”: Voices of social work students during COVID-19

Abstract As social work educators and students, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted our teaching and learning in challenging ways. We embarked on a qualitative research study to better understand the ways in which the pandemic was affecting the social work students in our program. Three faculty mentors worked collaboratively with five social work students across BSW, MSW, and PhD programs to interview 66 BSW and MSW students about their experiences, challenges, and hopes during the early months of the pandemic. BSW and MSW students led the analysis and early dissemination for the project. This essay describes the unique experiences of social work students by using a research poem to capture the emotional and experiential aspects of the students we interviewed.
Effects of coagulation temperature on the texture and yield of soy paneer (tofu)

A study was conducted to find the effect of coagulation temperature on textural properties and yield of soy paneer coagulated with calcium sulfate. Suitability of soy paneer for preparing various culinary dishes is greatly influenced by its texture. Soy paneer should have optimum firmness so that it permits easy cutting and slicing and yet being tender enough to resist crushing during mastication. Therefore, textural properties and yield of soy paneer were evaluated with a view to recommend suitable relevant parameters for the soy industry. Texture was analyzed in terms of hardness, cohesiveness, springiness, chewiness and adhesiveness. A food textural analyzer was used to measure the textural properties of soy paneer. It was observed that there is an increase in yield with the increase in coagulation temperature. It was found that hardness, cohesiveness, chewiness and adhesiveness increase with coagulation temperature up to 90 0 C, whereas springiness increases with coagulation temperature up to 85 0 C, remains constant between 85 0 C to 90 0 C and then decreases with the increase in temperature. The developed regression equations can be used to predict these properties within the tested temperature limits.
Improving learning by improving vision: evidence from two randomized controlled trials of providing vision care in China

ABSTRACT This paper examines the external validity of health intervention by comparing the impacts of providing free eyeglasses on the educational performance of nearsighted children in two settings: rural public schools in Western China and urban private migrant schools in Eastern China. The intervention significantly improves educational outcomes by 0.14 standard deviations in math in rural public schools but not in private migrant schools. The difference in measured impacts is due in part to lower quality schooling in migrant schools in Eastern China. Our findings show that only when school is providing a quality education, health interventions might increase student learnings.
Asthmatic patients and COVID‐19: Different disease course?

We read with great interest the article ‘‘Asthma and COVID-19: Is asthma a risk factor for severe outcomes? ’’ by Johnston1 about the possible implications of asthma asthma treatment and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the number of SARS-CoV-2–infected patients with asthma is consistent with the asthma incidence in the population despite the virus outbreak.2 There are few reports of COVID-19 in asthmatic patients. Therefore we aimed to investigate the disease course of COVID-19 in asthmatic patients from hospitalization until COVID-19 resolution. Patients were recruited at the Hospital das Clinicas—University of São Paulo (HCFMUSP). Asthma patients were selected based on the previous asthma diagnoses. COVID-19 was confirmed by the nasopharyngeal detection of SARS-CoV-2 by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Patients were evaluated daily until SARS-CoV-2 clearance and hospital discharge. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of HCFMUSP (No. 30 800 520.7.0000.0068-2020). We recruited 215 COVID-19–infected patients. Among those 5 (2.32%) had asthma and systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) a common comorbidity associated with asthma.3 A total of 7
The species of the varius group of Coccophagus (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae) from China, with description of a new species, DNA sequence data, and a new country record

ABSTRACT The Chinese species of the varius group of Coccophagus Westwood (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae) are reviewed, including described species Coccophagus albifuniculatus (Huang), C. anchoroides (Huang), C. caudatus (Huang), C. dilatatus (Huang), C. equifuniculatus (Huang), C. fumadus Hayat (new record for China), C. lii (Huang), C. pellucidus (Huang), and one new species, Coccophagus yunnana Wang, Huang & Polaszek sp. nov. A revised key to the females of the Chinese species of the varius group of Coccophagus is provided. Mitochondrial (CO1) and nuclear ribosomal (28S-D2) partial sequences were obtained successfully for C. fumadus. http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:264BBB77-9D32-4E9F-B31D-54E996FDEF7C
Future of e-Learning in Medical Education—Perception, Readiness, and Challenges in a Developing Country

Background: Medical institutes in India and globally were widely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and there was an almost immediate need to adapt modules for delivery on e-learning platforms. This study was undertaken to gauge the future and usefulness of e-learning in medical education by analyzing the perception, attitude, and readiness of healthcare learners during the ongoing pandemic. Methodology: A quantitative survey was conducted among the healthcare community, during lockdown i.e., over a period of five weeks from 8th May to June 13, 2020. A survey questionnaire was developed to understand the demographic details, knowledge, infrastructure access, and attitude of the healthcare professionals. It was circulated through snow-balling technique with one hundred healthcare and allied professionals (linked with Project ILBS-ECHO) as the initial seeds. Each person was asked to then circulate the survey to 20 or more of their contacts and so on for the proposed duration of the study. Identifying information was anonymized before and ethical approval was obtained prior to initiating the survey. Results: A total of 3,004 healthcare professionals voluntarily participated in the survey. The respondents were mostly young adults, with 61% of participants being <30 years of age. About 65.41% used e-learning platforms for obtaining knowledge and skills during the pandemic, despite 71.1% of the respondent reporting cyber security concerns. Significant advantages of e-learning mentioned by participants was reduction in travel time and assistance in maintaining social distancing (68.21%) without compromising learning. Conclusion: With learners consistently jumping on to the bandwagon, the trend can be anticipated to continue post pandemic. For this reason, the study tried to highlight the awareness, perceptions, and potential challenges faced by Indian healthcare and allied professionals regarding e-learning as a method of education.
Carbon nanospheres: synthesis, physicochemical properties and applications

The discovery of carbon nanostructures, essentially carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibres (CNF) has led to a big effort devoted to their synthesis, characterization, surface modification and use. Indeed, these structures have encountered application in a wide range of technological fields, such as adsorption, catalysis, hydrogen storage or electronics. Apart from the filamentous arrange of graphene sheets conducting to CNT or CNF, carbon can bond in other different ways to create structures with dissimilar properties. The pairing of pentagonal and heptagonal carbon rings can result in the formation of carbon nanospheres (CNS). This novel nanostructure has only now started to attract significant research activity. In its spherical arrangement, the graphite sheets are not closed shells but rather waving flakes that follow the curvature of the sphere, creating many open edges at the surface. Contrary to the chemically inert C60, the unclosed graphitic flakes provide reactive “dangling bonds” that are proposed to enhance surface reactions, establishing CNS as good candidates for catalytic and adsorption applications. Despite the embryonic stage of the field and the existing data being too scattered, this work is aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the existing literature related to CNS, exploring the different preparation routes employed, the critical characterization results as well as the applications studied so far.
Bequest-Embedded Annuities and Tontines

Abstract In the present paper, we propose death benefits be directly embedded in retirement products to promote their attractiveness, where annuities and tontines are used as representative retirement products. As we assume that the death benefits will be passed on to the heirs of policyholders, these benefits can be considered as bequests. We find that both from the policyholders’ and insurers’ perspective, embedding bequests directly in the retirement products can increase the attractiveness of the retirement products and promote their sale. From the insurers’ perspective, without including death benefits, the insurers play purely an administrative role in a tontine product, while adding the bequest benefits makes the tontines real insurance products and incentivizes the insurers to actively provide these innovative retirement products. Further, adding the bequest benefits upon the death of the policyholder, some natural hedging is incorporated in the survival payments, which reduces the solvency capital the insurers are required to set aside.
Alanine cross-feeding determines Escherichia coli colony growth dynamics

Bacteria commonly live in spatially structured assemblages encased by an extracellular matrix, termed biofilms. Metabolic activity of the cells inside biofilms causes gradients in local environmental conditions, which leads to the emergence of subpopulations with different metabolism. Basic information about the spatial arrangement of such metabolic subpopulations, as well as their interaction strength and interaction length scales are lacking, even for model systems like biofilms of Escherichia coli grown as colonies on agar-solidified media. Here, we use an unbiased approach based on temporal and spatial transcriptome and metabolome data during E. coli colony biofilm growth to identify many potential crossfeeding interactions. The strongest signature for cross-feeding in these data was displayed by alanine metabolism, and we discovered that alanine is indeed a cross-fed metabolite between two spatially segregated subpopulations: Alanine is secreted primarily via the transporter AlaE by anaerobically growing cells that are saturated with carbon and nitrogen, whereas alanine is utilized as a carbon and nitrogen source via DadA and DadX in the aerobic nutrient-deprived region at mid-height of the colony. We demonstrate that alanine cross-feeding influences cellular viability and growth in the cross-feedingdependent region, which shapes the overall colony morphology. More generally, our methodology enables an unbiased path to the identification and characterization of spatially organized metabolic interactions in microbial communities, which are essential for understanding community structure and stability.
On the relation between number-size distributions and the fractal dimension of aggregates

SUMMARY Number-size distributions (i.e. particle- and aggregate-size distributions) have historically been used as indicators of soil structure, and recent work has aimed to quantify this link using fractals to model the soil fabric. This interpretation of number-size distributions is evaluated, and it is shown that a number-size relation described by a power law does not in itself imply fractal structure as suggested, and a counter example is presented. Where fractal structure is assumed, it is shown that the power-law exponent, φ, describing the number-size distribution cannot be interpreted as the mass-fractal dimension, DM, of the aggregate. If the probability of fragmentation is independent of fragment diameter, then the exponent may be identified with the boundary dimension, DB, of the original matrix. If, however, as is likely, this probability is scale-dependent, then φ may over- or under-estimate the boundary dimension depending on whether the fragmentation probability increases or decreases with fragment size. The significance of these conclusions is discussed in terms of the interpretation of number-size distributions, and alternative methods for quantifying and interpreting soil structure are evaluated.
A BCI-based vibrotactile neurofeedback training improves motor cortical excitability during motor imagery

In this study, we address the issue of whether vibrotactile feedback can enhance the motor cortex excitability translated into the plastic changes in local cortical areas during motor imagery (MI) BCI-based training. For this purpose, we focused on two of the most notable neurophysiological effects of MI – the event-related-desynchronization (ERD) level and the increase in cortical excitability assessed with navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS). For TMS navigation, we used individual high-resolution 3D brain MRIs. Ten BCI-naive and healthy adults participated in this study. The MI (rest or left/right hand imagery using Graz-BCI paradigm) tasks were performed separately in the presence and absence of feedback. To investigate how much the presence/absence of vibrotactile feedback in MI BCI-based training could contribute to the sensorimotor cortical activations, we compared the MEPs amplitude during MI after training with and without feedback. In addition, the ERD levels during MI BCI-based training were investigated. Our findings provide evidence that applying vibrotactile feedback during MI training leads to (i) an enhancement of the desynchronization level of mu-rhythm EEG patterns over the contralateral motor cortex area corresponding to the MI of the non-dominant hand; (ii) an increase in motor cortical excitability in hand muscle representation corresponding to a muscle engaged by the MI.
Poly(rC)-Binding Protein 1 Limits Hepatitis C Virus Virion Assembly and Secretion

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) co-opts numerous cellular elements – including proteins, lipids, and microRNAs – to complete its viral life cycle. The cellular RNA-binding protein, poly(rC)-binding protein 1 (PCBP1), was previously reported to bind to the 5’ untranslated region (UTR) of the HCV genome; however, its importance in the viral life cycle has remained unclear. Herein, we sought to clarify the role of PCBP1 in the HCV life cycle. Using the HCV cell culture (HCVcc) system, we found that knockdown of endogenous PCBP1 resulted in an overall decrease in viral RNA accumulation, yet resulted in an increase in extracellular viral titers. To dissect PCBP1’s specific role in the HCV life cycle, we carried out assays for viral entry, translation, genome stability, RNA replication, as well as virion assembly and secretion. We found that PCBP1 knockdown did not directly affect viral entry, translation, RNA stability, or RNA replication, but resulted in an overall increase in infectious particle secretion. This increase in virion secretion was evident even when viral RNA synthesis was inhibited, and blocking virus secretion could partially restore the viral RNA accumulation decreased by PCBP1 knockdown. We therefore propose a model where endogenous PCBP1 normally limits virion assembly and secretion, which increases viral RNA accumulation in infected cells by preventing the departure of viral genomes packaged into virions. Overall, our findings improve our understanding of how cellular RNA-binding proteins influence viral genomic RNA utilization during the HCV life cycle.
Metacognitive Computations for Information Search: Confidence in Control

The metacognitive sense of confidence can play a critical role in regulating decisionmaking. In particular, a lack of confidence can justify the explicit, potentially costly, instrumental acquisition of extra information that might resolve the underlying uncertainty. Recent work has suggested a statistically sophisticated tapestry behind the information governing both the making and monitoring of choices. Here, we extend this tapestry to reveal extra richness in the use of confidence for controlling information seeking. We thereby highlight how different models of metacognition can generate diverse relationships between action, confidence, and information search. More broadly, our work shows how crucial it can be to treat metacognitive monitoring and control together.