Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Improved Multileaving Algorithm for Online Ranker Evaluation

Online ranker evaluation is a key challenge in information retrieval. An important task in the online evaluation of rankers is using implicit user feedback for inferring preferences between rankers. Interleaving methods have been found to be efficient and sensitive, i.e. they can quickly detect even small differences in quality. It has recently been shown that multileaving methods exhibit similar sensitivity but can be more efficient than interleaving methods. This paper presents empirical results demonstrating that existing multileaving methods either do not scale well with the number of rankers, or, more problematically, can produce results which substantially differ from evaluation measures like NDCG. The latter problem is caused by the fact that they do not correctly account for the similarities that can occur between rankers being multileaved. We propose a new multileaving method for handling this problem and demonstrate that it substantially outperforms existing methods, in some cases reducing errors by as much as 50%.
AN ASSESSMENT OF FETAL LOSS AMONG CURRENTLY MARRIED WOMEN IN INDIA

Summary The present paper assesses fetal loss among currently married women in India. In addition, the effects of social, economic, demographic and health factors on fetal loss are studied. The study uses data from the second National Family Health Survey conducted in India during 1998–2000. The results show wide variations in fetal loss (induced abortion, spontaneous abortion and still-birth) measures across the country. The importance of mother’s nutritional status, birth spacing, risky behaviours such as smoking, drinking and chewing tobacco and age at marriage for pregnancy outcomes in India is also discussed. The study results imply a broad understanding of reproductive health in India, and emphasize the importance of widening the scope of community-based reproductive health education programmes to improve the reproductive health of women.
Emerging issues in tropical ecohydrology preface

Tropical landscapes are of enormous importance. Accounting for about one fifth of the global land mass, they produce most of the Earth's streamflows and influence global as well as regional climates. In addition, because of the dual processes of climate change and deforestation, tropical landscapes are undergoing rapid changes. The effects of these changes on water and biogeochemical processes, at a range of scales, are immense—but poorly understood (Wohl et al., 2012). We do know that deforestation will lead to changes in evapotranspiration, streamflow, and precipitation, from local to regional scales (Coe, Latrubesse, Ferreira, & Amsler, 2011; Ogden, Crouch, Stallard, & Hall, 2013), and may even influence global climates (Avissar, Dias, Dias, & Nobre, 2002; Bonan, 2008). In addition, disturbances from deforestation have many other detrimental effects— including accelerated erosion, degradation of waterways, and loss of biodiversity. Similarly, in the tropics, climate change will likely lead to large‐scale and important changes in cloud and precipitation dynamics, in atmosphere–vegetation feedbacks, and/or in hydrologic cycles (Immerzeel, van Beek, & Bierkens, 2010). Given the accelerated pace of climate change, the importance of tropical landscapes, and our relatively poor understanding of tropical ecohydrology, an AGU Chapman Conference was convened in June 2016 to examine the current state of knowledge of tropical ecohydrology and to identify critical research needs (Wilcox, Bruijnzeel, & Asbjornsen, 2016). The conference had the further aim of fostering greater interdisciplinary collaboration across the spectrum of ecological and hydrological sciences, especially with regard to disciplinary ties between ecophysiologists and catchment hydrologists. A secondary goal was to enhance networking and research opportunities for early‐career scientists. One important outcome of this conference is the set of papers appearing in this special issue. They report on studies spanning a number of ecosystems within the tropics, including low‐elevation humid forests, montane forests and grasslands, and Caatinga shrublands in north‐eastern Brazil. Of the eight papers in this special issue, five are synthesis publications that provide a state‐of‐the‐knowledge review and also set future research directions (Aparecido et al., 2018; Berry et al., 2018; Hamel et al., 2018; Wemple et al., 2018; Wright et al., 2018). The other three examine key ecohydrological processes in diverse tropical landscapes (Leite et al., 2018; Moore, Orozco, Aparecido, & Miller, 2018; Ochoa‐Sánchez, Crespo, & Célleri, 2018). We are especially pleased that early‐career scientists have played a prominent role in the development of these papers. In an Ecohydrology Bearings: Invited Commentary associated with this special issue, Wright et al. (2018) not only provide an overview of
An Integrated Epidemiological and Economic Analysis of Vaccination against Highly Pathogenic Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

The purposes of this study are to assess pig farmers’ preference for highly pathogenic porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) vaccine, and estimate the cost and benefit of PRRS vaccination in Vietnam. This study employed an integrated epidemiological and economic analysis which combined susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) model, choice experiment (CE) and cost-benefit analysis (CBA) together. The result of SIR model showed the basic reproduction number (R0) of PRRS transmission in this study is 1.3, consequently, the optimal vaccination percentage is 26%. The results of CE in this study indicate that Vietnam pig farmers are showing a high preference for the PRRS vaccine. However, their mean willingness to pay is lower than the potential cost of PRRS vaccine. It can be considered to be one of the reasons that the PRRS vaccination ratio is still low in Vietnam. The results of CBA specified from the whole society’s point of view (Social perspective), the benefits of PRRS vaccination are 2.3 to 4.5 times larger than the costs. To support policy making for increasing the PRRS vaccination proportion, this study indicates two ways to increase the vaccination proportion: i) decrease vaccine price by providing a subsidy, ii) provide compensation of culling only for PRRS vaccinated pigs.
Association of Kidney Disease Measures With Ischemic Versus Hemorrhagic Strokes: Pooled Analyses of 4 Prospective Community-Based Cohorts

Background and purpose— Although low glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and albuminuria are associated with increased risk of stroke, few studies compared their contribution to risk of ischemic versus hemorrhagic stroke separately. We contrasted the association of these kidney measures with ischemic versus hemorrhagic stroke. Methods— We pooled individual participant data from 4 community-based cohorts: 3 from the United States and 1 from The Netherlands. GFR was estimated using both creatinine and cystatin C, and albuminuria was quantified by urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR). Associations of estimated GFR and ACR were compared for each stroke type (ischemic versus intraparenchymal hemorrhagic) using study-stratified Cox regression. Results— Among 29 595 participants (mean age, 61 [SD 12.5] years; 46% men; 17% black), 1261 developed stroke (12% hemorrhagic) during 280 549 person-years. Low estimated GFR was significantly associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke, but not hemorrhagic stroke, whereas high ACR was associated with both stroke types. Adjusted hazard ratios for ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke at estimated GFR of 45 (versus 95) mL/min per 1.73 m2 were 1.30 (95% confidence interval, 1.01–1.68) and 0.92 (0.47–1.81), respectively. In contrast, the corresponding hazard ratios for ACR of 300 (versus 5) mg/g were 1.62 (1.27–2.07) for ischemic and 2.57 (1.37–4.83) for hemorrhagic stroke, with significantly stronger association with hemorrhagic stroke (P=0.04). For hemorrhagic stroke, the association of elevated ACR was of similar magnitude as that of elevated systolic blood pressure. Conclusions— Whereas albuminuria showed significant association with both stroke types, the association of decreased estimated GFR was only significant for ischemic stroke. The strong association of albuminuria with both stroke types warrants clinical attention and further investigations.
Local Structure Detection with Orientation-invariant Radial Configuration

Local image descriptors have proved themselves as useful tools for many computer vision tasks such as matching points between multiple images of a scene and object recognition. Current descriptors, such as SIFT, are designed to match image features with unique local neighborhoods. However, the interest point detectors used with SIFT often fail to select perceptible local structures in the image, and the SIFT descriptor does not directly encode the local neighborhood shape. In this paper we propose a symmetry based interest point detector and radial local structure descriptor which consistently captures the majority of basic local image structures and provides a geometrical description of the structure boundaries. This approach concentrates on the extraction of shape properties in image patches, which are an intuitive way to represent local appearance for matching and classification. We explore the specificity and sensitivity of this local descriptor in the context of classification of natural patterns. The implications of the performance comparison with standard approaches like SIFT are discussed.
A stabilized finite element formulation of non-smooth contact

The computational modeling of many engineering problems using the Finite Element method involves the modeling of two or more bodies that meet through an interface. The interface can be physical, as in multi-physics and contact problems, or purely numerical, as in the coupling of non-conforming meshes. The most critical part of the modeling process is to ensure geometric compatibility and a complete transfer of surface tractions between the different components at the connecting interfaces. Popular contact modeling techniques rely on geometric projections to detect and resolve overlapping or mass interpenetration between two or more contacting bodies. Such approaches have been shown to have two major drawbacks: they are not suitable for contact at highly nonlinear surfaces and sharp corners where smooth normal projections are not feasible, and they fail to guarantee a complete and accurate transfer of pressure across the interface. This dissertation presents a novel formulation for the modeling of contact problems that possesses the ability to resolve complicated contact scenarios effectively, while being simpler to implement and more widely applicable than currently available methods. We show that the formulation boils down to a node-to-surface gap function that works effectively for non-smooth contact. The numerical implementation using the midpoint rule shows the need to guarantee the conservation of the total energy during impact, for which a Lagrange multiplier method is used. We propose a local enrichment of the interface and a simple stabilization procedure based on the discontinuous Galerkin method to guarantee an accurate transfer of the pressure field. The result is a robust interface formulation for contact problems and the coupling of non-conforming meshes.
Modelling the crop water requirement in Batticaloa district, Sri Lanka: FAO-Cropwat modelling for rice

Agriculture still the leading source of livelihood and contributes a great percentage to national income for most developing countries around the world. Since agriculture is the major user of water, improving agricultural water management is essential to any irrigation management approach specially to apply the exact amount of water to the field in order to meet crop water requirement. This study aims to estimate water requirement of rice by using the model CROPWAT. In this study, water requirement of rice for the two seasons were studied. The results show that, Batticaloa district receives around 1060mm effective rainfall per year. ETO value ranged between 3.07 and 4.57mm/day during December to April respectively. ETC value recorded as 1.76 to 3.66 mm/day during November to January respectively. In Maha season, crop water requirement of rice increases at the rate of 1.85 mm/day at initial stage to 3.3 mm/ day in the mid stage of growth. The water requirement of rice decreases from 3.46 mm/day in the lateseason to 3.03mm per day during the period of harvesting. In Yala season, ETC values were recorded as in between 2.13 to 4.5 mm/day during the period of May to July. The water requirement of rice decreases from 4.5 mm/ day to 3.29 mm per day during the late season to the period of harvesting. According to the study, effective rainfall were found to be 601.4 and 298.5 mm/ decade in Maha and Yala season respectively, and total crop water requirement are 349.2 and 436.7 mm/ decade in Maha and Yala season respectively. Therefore the model for planning of irrigation water requirements of rice is very important for efficient utilization of water and to meet the possible change of climate in agricultural sector.
Keyword proximity search in XML trees

Recent works have shown the benefits of keyword proximity search in querying XML documents in addition to text documents. For example, given query keywords over Shakespeare's plays in XML, the user might be interested in knowing how the keywords cooccur. In this paper, we focus on XML trees and define XML keyword, proximity queries to return the (possibly heterogeneous) set of minimum connecting trees (MCTs) of the matches to the individual keywords in the query. We consider efficiently executing keyword proximity queries on labeled trees (XML) in various settings: 1) when the XML database has been preprocessed and 2) when no indices are available on the XML database. We perform a detailed experimental evaluation to study the benefits of our approach and show that our algorithms considerably outperform prior algorithms and other applicable approaches.
Detection of motion blur direction based on maxima locations for blind deconvolution

The blurs in images closely resemble an ideal point spread function (PSF) model. This similarity can be exploited in the deconvolution process by learning a model that best fits the estimated PSF. In order to achieve this, a model is selected from the provided training set and then integrated into the reconstruction cost function. In this paper, we propose to eliminate the need for a training set and instead use a reference PSF (RPSF) in its place. This eliminates the need for specifying a training set as well as the dependence on estimated quantities. Furthermore, it is only dependent on the given degraded image assuming that it is uniformly blurred. The method is tested with motion blurs in different directions since it is one of the most commonly encountered problems when using consumer cameras. Using the blur support as a priori knowledge, the results show that the proposed method is capable of accurately determining the motion direction even in the presence of noise. The reconstruction of the image is achieved by using a modified cost function that also accounts for the contour of the estimated PSF. Results show that higher image quality and lower PSF estimation error can be obtained.
Effects of air pollution on general practitioner consultations for upper respiratory diseases in London

Objectives: Few published studies have examined the effect of air pollution on upper respiratory conditions. Furthermore, most epidemiological studies on air pollution focus on mortality or hospital admissions as the main health outcomes, but very rarely consider the effect in primary care. If pollution effects do exist then the public health impact could be considerable because of the many patient contacts involved. We investigated the relation between air pollution and upper respiratory disease as reflected in number of consultations made at family practices in London. Methods: The study used non-parametric methods of analysis of time series data, adjusting for seasonal factors, day of the week, holiday effects, influenza, weather, pollen concentrations, and serial correlation. Results: It was estimated that a 10–90th percentile change (13–31 μg/m3) in sulphur dioxide (SO2) measures resulted in a small increase in numbers of childhood consultation: 3.5% (95% confidence interval (95% CI 1.4% to 5.8%). Stronger associations were found in the case of a 10–90th percentile change (16–47 μg/m3) in fine particles (PM10) in adults aged 15–64 5.7% (2.9% to 8.6%), and in adults aged 65 and over: 10.2% (5.3% to 15.3%). In general, associations were strongest in elderly people, weakest in the children, and were largely found in the winter months for these two age groups, and in the summer months for adults aged 15–64. An apparent decrease in consultations was associated with ozone concentrations but this was most pronounced in colder months when ozone concentrations were at their lowest. Conclusions: The results suggest an adverse effect of air pollution on consultations for upper respiratory symptoms, in particular in the case of PM10 and SO2. The effects are relatively small; however, due to the many consultations made in primary care, the impact on demand for services could be considerable.
Timeline and distribution of melanocyte precursors in the mouse heart

Apart from the well‐studied melanocytes of the skin, eye and inner ear, another population has recently been described in the heart. In this study, we tracked cardiac melanoblasts using in situ hybridization with a dopachrome tautomerase (Dct) probe and Dct‐LacZ transgenic mice. Large numbers of melanoblasts were found in the atrioventricular (AV) endocardial cushions at embryonic day (E) 14.5 and persisted in the AV valves into adulthood. The earliest time Dct‐LacZ‐positive cells were observed in the AV endocardial cushions was E12.5. Prior to that, between E10.5 and E11.5, small numbers of melanoblasts traveled between the post‐otic area and third somite along the anterior and common cardinal veins and branchial arch arteries with other neural crest cells expressing CRABPI. Cardiac melanocytes were not found in the spotting mutants Ednrbs‐l/s‐l and Kitw‐v/w‐v, while large numbers were observed in transgenic mice that overexpress endothelin 3. These results indicate that cardiac melanocytes depend on the same signaling molecules known to be required for proper skin melanocyte development and may originate from the same precursor population. Cardiac melanocytes were not found in zebrafish or frog but were present in quail suggesting an association between cardiac melanocytes and four‐chambered hearts.
Discovering Concrete Attacks on Website Authorization by Formal Analysis

Social sign-on and social sharing are becoming an ever more popular feature of web applications. This success is largely due to the APIs and support offered by prominent social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, on the basis of new open standards such as the OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol. A formal analysis of these protocols must account for malicious websites and common web application vulnerabilities, such as cross-site request forgery and open redirectors. We model several configurations of the OAuth 2.0 protocol in the applied pi-calculus and verify them using ProVerif. Our models rely on WebSpi, a new library for modeling web applications and web-based attackers that is designed to help discover concrete website attacks. Our approach is validated by finding dozens of previously unknown vulnerabilities in popular websites such as Yahoo and Word Press, when they connect to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Abstract Anaphora Resolution in Danish

In this paper I describe the use of Danish pronouns and deictics in dialogues. Then I present an adaptation to Danish of Eckert and Strube's algorithm for resolving anaphora referring to individual NPs and abstract objects in English dialogues (Eckert and Strube, 1999b; Eckert and Strube, 1999a). The adapted algorithm is tested on four Danish dialogues from two dialogue collections and the results obtained are evaluated.
Polyakov loop and its relation to static quark potentials and free energies

It appears well accepted in the literature that the correlator of Polyakov loops in a finite temperature system decays with the average free energy of the static quark-antiquark system and can be decomposed into singlet and adjoint (or octet for QCD) contributions. By fixing a gauge respecting the transfer matrix, attempts have been made to extract those contributions separately. In this paper we point out that the average and adjoint channels of Polyakov loop correlators are misconceptions. We show analytically that all channels receive contributions from singlet states only, and give a corrected definition of the singlet free energy. We verify this finding by simulations of the 3D SU(2) pure gauge theory in the zero-temperature limit, which allows one to cleanly extract the ground state exponents and the nontrivial matrix elements. The latter account for the difference between the channels observed in previous simulations.
Approximate matrix multiplication with application to linear embeddings

In this paper, we study the problem of approximately computing the product of two real matrices. In particular, we analyze a dimensionality-reduction-based approximation algorithm due to Sarlos [1], introducing the notion of nuclear rank as the ratio of the nuclear norm over the spectral norm. The presented bound has improved dependence with respect to the approximation error (as compared to previous approaches), whereas the subspace - on which we project the input matrices - has dimensions proportional to the maximum of their nuclear rank and it is independent of the input dimensions. In addition, we provide an application of this result to linear low-dimensional embeddings. Namely, we show that any Euclidean point-set with bounded nuclear rank is amenable to projection onto number of dimensions that is independent of the input dimensionality, while achieving additive error guarantees.
Serotonin (5‐HT) regulates neurite outgrowth through 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT7 receptors in cultured hippocampal neurons

Serotonin (5‐HT) production and expression of 5‐HT receptors (5‐HTRs) occur early during prenatal development. Recent evidence suggests that, in addition to its classical role as a neurotransmitter, 5‐HT regulates neuronal connectivity during mammalian development by modulating cell migration and neuronal cytoarchitecture. Given the variety of 5‐HTRs, researchers have had difficulty clarifying the specific role of each receptor subtype in brain development. Signalling mediated by the G‐protein‐coupled 5‐HT1AR and 5‐HT7R, however, has been associated with neuronal plasticity. Thus, we hypothesized that 5‐HT promotes neurite outgrowth through 5‐HT1AR and 5‐HT7R. The involvement of 5‐HT1AR and 5‐HT7R in the morphology of rat hippocampal neurons was evaluated by treating primary cultures at 2 days in vitro with 5‐HT and specific antagonists for 5‐HT1AR and 5‐HT7R (WAY‐100635 and SB269970, respectively). The stimulation of hippocampal neurons with 100 nM 5‐HT for 24 hr produced no effect on either the number or the length of primary neurites. Nonetheless, after 5HT7R was blocked, the addition of 5‐HT increased the number of primary neurites, suggesting that 5HT7R could inhibit neuritogenesis. In contrast, 5‐HT induced secondary neurite outgrowth, an effect inhibited by 1 μM WAY‐100635 or SB269970. These results suggest that both serotonergic receptors participate in secondary neurite outgrowth. We conclude that 5‐HT1AR and 5‐HT7R regulate neuronal morphology in primary hippocampal cultures by promoting secondary neurite outgrowth. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.