Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Private Graphon Estimation for Sparse Graphs

We design algorithms for fitting a high-dimensional statistical model to a large, sparse network without revealing sensitive information of individual members. Given a sparse input graph $G$, our algorithms output a node-differentially-private nonparametric block model approximation. By node-differentially-private, we mean that our output hides the insertion or removal of a vertex and all its adjacent edges. If $G$ is an instance of the network obtained from a generative nonparametric model defined in terms of a graphon $W$, our model guarantees consistency, in the sense that as the number of vertices tends to infinity, the output of our algorithm converges to $W$ in an appropriate version of the $L_2$ norm. In particular, this means we can estimate the sizes of all multi-way cuts in $G$. Our results hold as long as $W$ is bounded, the average degree of $G$ grows at least like the log of the number of vertices, and the number of blocks goes to infinity at an appropriate rate. We give explicit error bounds in terms of the parameters of the model; in several settings, our bounds improve on or match known nonprivate results.
Familial Combined Hyperlipoproteinemia EVIDENCE FOR A ROLE OF GROWTH HORMONE DEFICIENCY IN EFFECTING ITS MANIFESTATION

A B S T R A C T Hyperlipidemia associated with an isolated deficiency of growth hormone was investigated in 10 subjects with hypercholesterolemiia consistently present over a 10-yr period. 8 of these 10 had serum triglyceride concentrations >185 mg/dl. 13 growth hormone-deficient patients with normal serum lipids, 28 age-matched controls, and 6 families possessing both growth hormone-deficient and hormonally normal members were also studied. combined hyperlipoproteinemia.
Impact of renal dysfunction and glucometabolic status on one month mortality after acute myocardial infarction

Patients with impaired glucometabolic status or renal function have a higher mortality after acute myocardial infarction. It is unclear whether this higher risk is independent or related to the quality of care. In a prospective registry, stress hyperglycaemia (SH) was defined as glucose level>140 mg/dl. Renal function was assessed by the glomerular filtration rate (GFR): normal (⩾60), mild (30–60) and severe dysfunction (<30 ml/min/1.72 m2). The level of risk was assessed by the TIMI risk index and the quality of care by the rate of use of five guidelines‐recommended treatments. Among the 1388 patients included, 23% had diabetes, 16% had SH, renal function was normal in 55%, mildly impaired in 35% and severely impaired in 9.5%. At one month, the mortality rate was higher in patients with SH (18%) as compared with diabetics (9%) or those with normal glucometabolic status (5%). Similarly, the mortality rate was higher in those with impaired renal function. Multivariable analysis identified SH, GFR group, TIMI risk index, ST segment elevation MI and quality of care as independent predictors of one‐month mortality. In patients with acute MI, SH and GFR<30 ml/min/m2 are independent predictors of mortality after adjustment for the level of risk and acute care.
Prognostic Nomogram for Thoracic Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma after Radical Esophagectomy

Nomogram has demonstrated its capability in individualized estimates of survival in diverse cancers. Here we retrospectively investigated 1195 patients with esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (ESCC) who underwent radical esophagectomy at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital in Hangzhou, China. We randomly assigned two-thirds of the patients to a training cohort (n = 797) and one-third to a validation cohort (n = 398). Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were performed using the training cohort, and a nomogram was developed for predicting 3-year and 5-year overall survival rates. Multivariate analysis identified tumor length, surgical approach, number of examined lymph node, number of positive lymph node, extent of positive lymph node, grade, and depth of invasion as independent risk factors for survival. The discriminative ability of the nomogram was externally determined using the validation cohort, showing that the nomogram exhibited a sufficient level of discrimination according to the C-index (0.715, 95% CI 0.671–0.759). The C-index of the nomogram was significantly higher than that of the sixth edition (0.664, P-value<0.0001) and the seventh edition (0.696, P-value<0.0003) of the TNM classification. This study developed the first nomogram for ESCC, which can be applied in daily clinical practice for individualized survival prediction.
Characterizing Dose‐Response Relationships in Multiple Cancer Bioassays

In the evaluation of chemical compounds for carcinogenic risk, regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Toxicology Program (NTP) have traditionally fit a dose‐response model to data from rodent bioassays, and then used the fitted model to estimate a Virtually Safe Dose or the dose corresponding to a very small increase (usually 10−6) in risk over background. Much recent interest has been directed at incorporating additional scientific information regarding the properties of the specific chemical under investigation into the risk assessment process, including biological mechanisms of cancer induction, metabolic pathways, and chemical structure and activity. Despite the fact that regulatory agencies are currently poised to allow use of nonlinear dose‐response models based on the concept of an underlying threshold for nongenotoxic chemicals, there have been few attempts to investigate the overall relationship between the shape of dose‐response curves and mutagenicity. Using data from an historical database of NTP cancer bioassays, the authors conducted a repeated‐measures analysis of the estimated shape from fitting extended Weibull dose‐response curves. It was concluded that genotoxic chemicals have dose‐response curves that are closer to linear than those for nongenotoxic chemicals, though on average, both types of compounds have dose‐response curves that are convex and the effect of genotoxicity is small.
The Development and Controlled Evaluation of Athletic Mental Preparation Strategies in High School Distance Runners

This study examined the influences of two mental preparation interventions on 1.6 km run performance in 90 (45 male, 45 female) high school long-distance runners in Nevada, U.S.A. After participants completed a 1.6 km baseline run, they were randomly assigned to receive one of these interventions 3 min prior to a second 1.6 km run (i.e., listening to a personalized script of motivational and running technique statements on headphones, listening to music on headphones, listening to no sound on headphones). Results of running performance indicated that participants who were assigned to the motivational and running technique statements and music conditions significantly improved their run performance, whereas participants in the no-sound control condition did not. Youth ratings of intervention satisfaction were consistent with performance outcome. Study implications and future directions are discussed in light of these results.
Sequential Redundancy and Speed in a Serial Two-Choice Responding Task

The task used is a self-paced 2-choice serial responding task, involving two neon lamps as signals and two response keys in simple spatial correspondence with the signals. In Experiment 1, three conditions with respectively 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 alternations between successive signals were compared. It appeared that subjects go faster with 1/4 than with 3/4 alternations. From the point of view of information theory, both conditions present the same amount of information per signal. The asymmetry in the effects of both forms of sequential redundancy could be attributed either to some bias in the expectations of the subjects or to some inertia phenomenon favouring responses to repeated signals. It was reasoned that if the last explanation was true, the asymmetry would be reduced if a time-lag was introduced between end of response and appearance of next signal. This was done for one group of subjects in Experiment 2. These subjects worked on the same three conditions, with a time-lag of 0.5 sec. The asymmetry was significantly reduced when compared with another group of subjects who worked with the same 0.05 sec. time-lag as in Experiment 1. Analysis of separate RTs confirmed the main conclusion that choice processes involve a transitory residual effect favouring repetitions.
Bearing the weight: the kayayoo, Ghana's working girl child

Bearing the weight: human transport in a developing society The transport contribution of rural women in Africa has received substantial attention (Howe and Barwell, 1987). An important finding of this body of research is that women and girls are used and use themselves as a means of transport. With this finding in mind, and as part of a larger project exploring the travel and transport situation of low-income urban women in Ghana, the social, economic and travel circumstances of head-load carriers or kayayoosl was identified as a research issue. Pilot research on the topic was undertaken in March/April 1993 and the full-scale research of women and girls as a form of urban human transport has now commenced.
An energy efficient dynamic gait for a Nao robot

This paper presents a framework to generate energy efficient dynamic human-like walk for a Nao humanoid robot. We first extend the inverted pendulum model with the goal of finding an energy efficient and stable walking gait. In this model, we propose a leg control policy which utilizes joint stiffness control. We use policy gradient reinforcement learning to identify the optimal parameters of the new gait for a Nao humanoid robot. We successfully test the control policy in a simulator and on a real Nao robot. The test results show that the new control policy realizes a dynamic walk that is more energy efficient than the standard walk of Nao robot.
The purpose of the PhD: theorising the skills acquired by students

In the past decade there has been a marked push for the development of employability skills to be part of the PhD process. This push is generally by stakeholders from above and outside the PhD process, i.e. government and industry, who view skills as a summative product of the PhD. In contrast, our study interviewed stakeholders inside the PhD process – twenty final‐year, full‐time Australian PhD students – to provide a bottom‐up perspective into the skills question. Using grounded theory procedures we theorise the skills students develop during the PhD as a formative developmental process of acquiring intellectual virtues. Drawing on Aristotelian theory, we propose that theorising the PhD as a process of acquiring intellectual virtues offers a more robust and conceptually richer framework for understanding students’ development during the PhD than the instrumental focus on skills evident in contemporary debates.
Mandarin Word-Character Hybrid-Input Neural Network Language Model

We applied neural network language model (NNLM) on Chinese by training and testing it on 2011 GALE Mandarin evaluation task. Exploiting the fact that there are no word boundaries in written Chinese, we trained various NNLMs using either word, character, or both, including a wordcharacter hybrid-input NNLM which accepts both word and character as input. Our best result showed up to 0.6% absolute (6.3% relative) Character Error Rate (CER) reduction compared to an un-pruned 4-gram standard language model and 0.2% absolute (2.6% relative) CER reduction compared to a word-based NNLM. Index Terms: speech recognition, neural network language model
Reply to Allison: More on Comparing Regression Coefficients

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Comparison of effects between home visits with telephone calls and telephone calls only for transitional discharge support: a randomised controlled trial

Background: home visits and telephone calls are two often used approaches in transitional care but their differential effects are unknown. Objective: to examine the overall effects of a transitional care programme for discharged medical patients and the differential effects of telephone calls only. Design: randomised controlled trial. Setting: a regional hospital in Hong Kong. Participants: patients discharged from medical units fitting the inclusion criteria (n = 610) were randomly assigned to: control (‘control’, n = 210), home visits with calls (‘home’, n = 196) and calls only (‘call’, n = 204). Intervention: the home groups received alternative home visits and calls and the call groups calls only for 4 weeks. The control group received two placebo calls. The nurse case manager was supported by nursing students in delivering the interventions. Results: the home visit group (after 4 weeks 10.7%, after 12 weeks 21.4%) and the call group (11.8, 20.6%) had lower readmission rates than the control group (17.6, 25.7%). Significance differences were detected in intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis for the home and intervention group (home and call combined) at 4 weeks. In the per-protocol analysis (PPA) results, significant differences were found in all groups at 4 weeks. There was significant improvement in quality of life, self-efficacy and satisfaction in both ITT and PPA for the study groups. Conclusions: this study has found that bundled interventions involving both home visits and calls are more effective in reducing readmissions. Many of the transitional care programmes use all-qualified nurses, and this study reveals that a mixed skills model seems to bring about positive effects as well.
Mouse Survival Motor Neuron Alleles That Mimic SMN2 Splicing and Are Inducible Rescue Embryonic Lethality Early in Development but Not Late

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by low survival motor neuron (SMN) levels and patients represent a clinical spectrum due primarily to varying copies of the survival motor neuron-2 (SMN2) gene. Patient and animals studies show that disease severity is abrogated as SMN levels increase. Since therapies currently being pursued target the induction of SMN, it will be important to understand the dosage, timing and cellular requirements of SMN for disease etiology and potential therapeutic intervention. This requires new mouse models that can induce SMN temporally and/or spatially. Here we describe the generation of two hypomorphic Smn alleles, SmnC-T-Neo and Smn2B-Neo. These alleles mimic SMN2 exon 7 splicing, titre Smn levels and are inducible. They were specifically designed so that up to three independent lines of mice could be generated, herein we describe two. In a homozygous state each allele results in embryonic lethality. Analysis of these mutants indicates that greater than 5% of Smn protein is required for normal development. The severe hypomorphic nature of these alleles is caused by inclusion of a loxP-flanked neomycin gene selection cassette in Smn intron 7, which can be removed with Cre recombinase. In vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate these as inducible Smn alleles. When combined with an inducible Cre mouse, embryonic lethality caused by low Smn levels can be rescued early in gestation but not late. This provides direct genetic evidence that a therapeutic window for SMN inductive therapies may exist. Importantly, these lines fill a void for inducible Smn alleles. They also provide a base from which to generate a large repertoire of SMA models of varying disease severities when combined with other Smn alleles or SMN2-containing mice.
Performance Analysis of Covariance Matrix Estimates in Impulsive Noise

This paper deals with covariance matrix estimates in impulsive noise environments. Physical models based on compound noise modeling [spherically invariant random vectors (SIRV), compound Gaussian processes] allow to correctly describe reality (e.g., range power variations or clutter transitions areas in radar problems). However, these models depend on several unknown parameters (covariance matrix, statistical distribution of the texture, disturbance parameters) that have to be estimated. Based on these noise models, this paper presents a complete analysis of the main covariance matrix estimates used in the literature. Four estimates are studied: the well-known sample covariance matrix MSCM and a normalized version MN, the fixed-point (FP) estimate MFP, and a theoretical benchmark MTFP. Among these estimates, the only one of practical interest in impulsive noise is the FP. The three others, which could be used in a Gaussian context, are, in this paper, only of academic interest, i.e., for comparison with the FP. A statistical study of these estimates is performed through bias analysis, consistency, and asymptotic distribution. This study allows to compare the performance of the estimates and to establish simple relationships between them. Finally, theoretical results are emphasized by several simulations corresponding to real situations.
I'm Doing As Much As I Can: Occupational Choices of Persons with a Severe and Persistent Mental Illness

Abstract Competitive employment is important for meeting many needs that contribute to health. For persons with a mental illness, entering or re‐entering the workforce is often an unattainable goal. Despite rehabilitation efforts, unemployment rates remain very high. This study used in‐depth, long interviews and member checking to explore what persons with a severe and persistent mental illness do in the absence of competitive employment. The study was designed to discover what supported or hindered their evolving occupational life paths. The major findings of this study were that persons with a mental illness make choices constrained by fear of relapse and socio‐economic realities, to engage in occupations that will maintain or enhance their social connections, and most importantly, their health.
ACCURAT Toolkit for Multi-Level Alignment and Information Extraction from Comparable Corpora

The lack of parallel corpora and linguistic resources for many languages and domains is one of the major obstacles for the further advancement of automated translation. A possible solution is to exploit comparable corpora (non-parallel bi- or multi-lingual text resources) which are much more widely available than parallel translation data. Our presented toolkit deals with parallel content extraction from comparable corpora. It consists of tools bundled in two workflows: (1) alignment of comparable documents and extraction of parallel sentences and (2) extraction and bilingual mapping of terms and named entities. The toolkit pairs similar bilingual comparable documents and extracts parallel sentences and bilingual terminological and named entity dictionaries from comparable corpora. This demonstration focuses on the English, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Romanian languages.
4G Wireless Networks: Opportunities and Challenges

With the major wireless service providers planning to start deployment of 4G wireless networks by mid 2010, research and industry communities are racing against time to find solutions for some of the prominent still open issues in 4G networks. The growing interest in 4G networks is driven by the set of new services will be made available for the first time such as accessing the Internet anytime from anywhere, global roaming, and wider support for multimedia applications. In this paper describe some of the key opportunities will be made available by 4G networks, present key challenges and point to some proposed solutions.
Categorical perception of sex occurs in familiar but not unfamiliar faces

We investigated whether male and female faces are discrete categories at the perceptual level and whether familiarization plays a role in the categorical perception of sex. We created artificial sex continua between male and female faces using a 3‐D morphing algorithm and used classical categorization and discrimination tasks to investigate categorical perception of sex. In Experiments 1 and 2, 3‐D morphs were computed between individual male and female faces. In Experiments 3 and 4, we used face continua in which only the sex of the facial features changed, while the identity characteristics of the facial features remained constant. When the faces were unfamiliar (Experiments 1 and 3), we failed to find evidence for categorical perception of sex. In Experiments 2 and 4, we familiarized participants with the individual face images by instructing participants to learn the names of the individuals in the endpoint face images (Experiment 2) or to classify face images along a continuum as male or female using a feedback procedure (Experiment 4). In both these experiments we found evidence for a categorical effect for sex after familiarization. Our findings suggest that despite the importance of face perception in our everyday world, sex information present in faces is not naturally perceived categorically. Categorical perception of sex was only found after training with the face stimulus set. Our findings have implications for functional models of face processing which suggest two independent processing routes, one for facial expression and one for identity: We propose that sex perception is closely linked with the processing of facial identity.
Parallel Factorization Machine Recommended Algorithm Based on MapReduce

Factorization Machines [1, 2] is a new factorization model that can combine the merits of SVM model with matrix factorization models. It can model all the interactive actions using factorized parameters. So it could mimic most other matrix factorization models by feature engineering. Due to the superior flexible, Factorization Machines has already been widely used in many recommended algorithm competitions and practical online recommended system. But, because of the prevalence of large dataset, there is a need to improve the scalability of computation in factorization machines model. In this paper, we propose a parallel algorithm can be used on Factorization Machines model. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has good speed-up and scalability on big dataset.
Product preconditioning for Markov chain problems

We consider preconditioned Krylov subspace methods for computing the stationary probability distribution vector of irreducible Markov chains. We propose preconditioners constructed as the product of two fairly simple preconditioners. Theoretical properties of the proposed product preconditioners are briefly discussed. We use graph partitioning tools to partition the coefficient matrix in order to build the preconditioner matrices, and we investigate the effect of the partitioning on the proposed preconditioners. Numerical experiments with GMRES on various Markov chain problems generated with the MARCA software package demonstrate that the proposed preconditioners are effective in reducing the number of iterations to convergence. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the number of partitions does not severely affect the number of iterations.