Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TCMID 2.0: a comprehensive resource for TCM

Abstract As a traditional medical intervention in Asia and a complementary and alternative medicine in western countries, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is capturing worldwide attention in life science field. Traditional Chinese Medicine Integrated Database (TCMID), which was originally launched in 2013, was a comprehensive database aiming at TCM’s modernization and standardization. It has been highly recognized among pharmacologists and scholars in TCM researches. The latest release, TCMID 2.0 (http://www.megabionet.org/tcmid/), replenished the preceding database with 18 203 herbal ingredients, 15 prescriptions, 82 related targets, 1356 drugs, 842 diseases and numerous new connections between them. Considering that chemical changes might take place in decocting process of prescriptions, which may result in new ingredients, new data containing the prescription ingredients was collected in current version. In addition, 778 herbal mass spectrometry (MS) spectra related to 170 herbs were appended to show the variation of herbal quality in different origin and distinguish genuine medicinal materials from common ones while 3895 MS spectra of 729 ingredients were added as the supplementary materials of component identification. With the significant increase of data, TCMID 2.0 will further facilitate TCM’s modernization and enhance the exploration of underlying biological processes that are response to the diverse pharmacologic actions of TCM.
Attention as foraging for information and value

What is the purpose of attention? One avenue of research has led to the proposal that attention might be crucial for gathering information about the environment, while other lines of study have demonstrated how attention may play a role in guiding behavior to rewarded options. Many experiments that study attention require participants to make a decision based on information acquired discretely at one point in time. In real-world situations, however, we are usually not presented with information about which option to select in such a manner. Rather we must initially search for information, weighing up reward values of options before we commit to a decision. Here, we propose that attention plays a role in both foraging for information and foraging for value. When foraging for information, attention is guided toward the unknown. When foraging for reward, attention is guided toward high reward values, allowing decision-making to proceed by accept-or-reject decisions on the currently attended option. According to this account, attention can be regarded as a low-cost alternative to moving around and physically interacting with the environment—“teleforaging”—before a decision is made to interact physically with the world. To track the timecourse of attention, we asked participants to seek out and acquire information about two gambles by directing their gaze, before choosing one of them. Participants often made multiple refixations on items before making a decision. Their eye movements revealed that early in the trial, attention was guided toward information, i.e., toward locations that reduced uncertainty about value. In contrast, late in the trial, attention was guided by expected value of the options. At the end of the decision period, participants were generally attending to the item they eventually chose. We suggest that attentional foraging shifts from an uncertainty-driven to a reward-driven mode during the evolution of a decision, permitting decisions to be made by an engage-or-search strategy.
An object-oriented program development environment for the first programming course

Over the last ten years there has been a major shift in programming language design from procedural languages to object-oriented languages. Most universities have adopted an object-oriented language for their first programming course. However, far less consideration has been given to the program development environment. In this paper we argue that the environment is possibly more important than the language and existing environments fail to fully support the object-oriented paradigm. We describe a new program development environment and show how it has been specifically designed to support object-oriented design and programming.
A Semi-Automatic Method for Annotating a Biomedical Proposition Bank

In this paper, we present a semiautomatic approach for annotating semantic information in biomedical texts. The information is used to construct a biomedical proposition bank called BioProp. Like PropBank in the newswire domain, BioProp contains annotations of predicate argument structures and semantic roles in a treebank schema. To construct BioProp, a semantic role labeling (SRL) system trained on PropBank is used to annotate BioProp. Incorrect tagging results are then corrected by human annotators. To suit the needs in the biomedical domain, we modify the PropBank annotation guidelines and characterize semantic roles as components of biological events. The method can substantially reduce annotation efforts, and we introduce a measure of an upper bound for the saving of annotation efforts. Thus far, the method has been applied experimentally to a 4,389-sentence tree-bank corpus for the construction of BioProp. Inter-annotator agreement measured by kappa statistic reaches . 95 for combined decision of role identification and classification when all argument labels are considered. In addition, we show that, when trained on BioProp, our biomedical SRL system called BIOSMILE achieves an F-score of 87%.
Taiwanese Migrants in Australia: An Investigation of Their Acculturation and Wellbeing

Taiwanese migrants who have settled in Brisbane, Australia (N = 271) completed a questionnaire battery available in both Mandarin and English. A series of multiple and hierarchical regression analyses were used to investigate the factors associated with these migrants’ acculturation and indicators of psychological wellbeing. Results indicated that various personal factors (age, English language proficiency, and duration of stay) were associated with acculturation and indicators of psychological wellbeing. Acculturation was not associated with wellbeing. Social support was associated with the indicators of the participants’ wellbeing. The outcome indicated that although associated with similar personal and environmental factors, acculturation and psychological wellbeing occurred separately. The study highlights the significance of certain personal resources and social support.
Automatic Matching of ICD-10 codes to Diagnoses in Discharge Letters

This paper presents an approach for auto$ matic mapping of International Classifica$ tion of Diseases 10th revision (ICD$10) codes to diagnoses extracted from dis$ charge letters. The proposed algorithm is designed for processing free text docu$ ments in Bulgarian language. Diseases are often described in the medical patient records as free text using terminology, phrases and paraphrases which differ sig$ nificantly from those used in ICD$10 clas$ sification. In this way the task of diseases recognition (which practically means e.g. assigning standardized ICD codes to dis$ eases’ names) is an important natural lan$ guage processing (NLP) challenge. The approach is based on multiclass Support Vector Machines method, where each ICD$10 4 character classification code is considered as single class. The problem is reduced to multiple binary classifiers and classification is done by a max$wins vot$ ing strategy.
Shaping Estonian primary school pupils’ values by using bullying-prevention methods

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to identify to what extent using the methodology of the programme ‘Bullying-free school’, initiated in the Kingdom of Denmark in 2007 and implemented in schools in Estonia since 2013, has supported the development of ethical values in primary school pupils. The methodology focuses on four value attitudes: tolerance, respect, consideration and courage, and achieving these through developing a behavioural culture that attaches value to oneself, fellow-pupils and adults. The data were collected by means of a semi-structured focus group interview, addressing pupils’ behaviour, experience and feelings. The study revealed that the bullying-prevention programme has developed joint values in school classes – tolerance, consideration, respect and courage, as well as an ability to think about these values and discuss them. Better results have been achieved in the classes where bullying prevention is conducted systematically and consistently.
The impact of external involvement on new product market performance: An analysis of mediation and moderation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bridge the gap in understanding the effects of external involvement on new product market performance. Particularly, the authors investigate the mediating effects of speed-to-market of new products and moderating effects of information technology (IT) implementation. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on the high-performance manufacturing (HPM) project database collected from 366 manufacturing plants in ten countries and three representative industries. The hierarchical regression analysis is employed to explore the relationships in the model. Findings The empirical findings indicate that speed-to-market of new products positively and significantly mediates the relationship between customer involvement and new product market performance. The results also demonstrate that IT implementation moderates the relationship between external involvement and speed-to-market of new products. More importantly, the findings reveal that supplier involvement is less likely to lead to the enhancement of speed-to-market if the firm is not able to establish a higher level of IT implementation. Practical implications This analysis uncovers the way of how customer and supplier involvement are related to new product market performance, and highlights the importance of IT implementation in absorbing and exploiting external resources. Originality/value This paper moves us from a simplistic understanding of external involvement to a more nuanced and complex model which is closer to reality. The obtained findings highlight the importance for manufacturers to establish speed advantage of new products and implement IT as an enabler.
Discovering Sequential Disease Patterns in MedicalDatabases Using FreeSpan Mining Approach

In this work we employ FreeSpan, one of the sequential pattern mining methods, to discover sequential disease patterns in sequential database. For our study, we use a medical database which was built as a transactional database. There is a different representation data with sequential database that will be used as an input for FreeSpan method. Therefore, we build sequential database from medical databases. The generated patterns are used as knowledge to predict the sequential disease. Therefore, the medical representative can take preventive and curative actions more precise. To make the sequential disease patterns easily to understand, we visualize the pattern using graph.
An adaptive profile based fraud detection framework for handling concept drift

As e-commerce continues to grow, so does the opportunity for perpetrating online fraud. As a result many researches have been conducted to make online transactions possible in a risk free environment by proposing different fraud detection methods. Concept drift is an inherent feature in many data streams such as electronic financial transactions. Hence, many fraud detection techniques have tried to detect and preferably manage concept drift. In this paper, a new concept drift management framework has been proposed. In this framework a temporary profile has been introduced in order to retain new concepts in the incoming data stream independently from historical profile. When the historical profile reaches a different decision from the temporary profile this is an indication that most probably a concept drift has occurred. In this case, a window based method is applied as a strategy for managing concept drift. The ability to adapt normal profiles systematically makes this concept drift management framework applicable to any profile based fraud detection method. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme is able to reduce the false positives (FPs) of a typical fraud detection method to 4.3% on average in the presence of a wide variety of concept drifts in the incoming transactions. This is an average of 85.7% reduction in FPs for this fraud detection technique.
Forecasts of 21st Century Snowpack and Implications for Snowmobile and Snowcoach Use in Yellowstone National Park

Climate models project a general decline in western US snowpack throughout the 21st century, but long-term, spatially fine-grained, management-relevant projections of snowpack are not available for Yellowstone National Park. We focus on the implications that future snow declines may have for oversnow vehicle (snowmobile and snowcoach) use because oversnow tourism is critical to the local economy and has been a contentious issue in the park for more than 30 years. Using temperature-indexed snow melt and accumulation equations with temperature and precipitation data from downscaled global climate models, we forecast the number of days that will be suitable for oversnow travel on each Yellowstone road segment during the mid- and late-21st century. The west entrance road was forecast to be the least suitable for oversnow use in the future while the south entrance road was forecast to remain at near historical levels of driveability. The greatest snow losses were forecast for the west entrance road where as little as 29% of the December–March oversnow season was forecast to be driveable by late century. The climatic conditions that allow oversnow vehicle use in Yellowstone are forecast by our methods to deteriorate significantly in the future. At some point it may be prudent to consider plowing the roads that experience the greatest snow losses.
A robust hybrid approach for text line segmentation in historical documents

Large-scale digitisation of historical documents demands robust methods that cope with the presence of frequent distortions and noisy artefacts. This paper presents a hybrid text line segmentation method that uses a novel data structure and a rule base to combine the strengths of top-down and bottom-up approaches while minimising their weaknesses. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been methodically evaluated in the context of large-scale digitisation using a standardised framework. Results on a diverse dataset show improved performance over top-down and bottom-up approaches as well as over a leading commercially available system.
Antitumor and Antimetastatic Activity of IL-231

The structure and T cell stimulatory effects of the recently discovered cytokine IL-23 are similar to, but distinct from, those of IL-12. Although the antitumor activities of IL-12 are well characterized, the effect of IL-23 on tumor growth is not known. In this study, murine CT26 colon adenocarcinoma and B16F1 melanoma cells were engineered using retroviral vectors to release single-chain IL-23 (scIL-23) to evaluate its antitumor activity. In BALB/c mice, scIL-23-transduced CT26 cells grew progressively until day 26 to an average size of 521 ± 333 mm3, then the tumors started to regress in most animals, resulting in a final 70% rate of complete tumor rejection. scIL-23 transduction also significantly suppressed lung metastases of CT26 and B16F1 tumor cells. In addition, mice that rejected scIL-23-transduced tumors developed a memory response against subsequent wild-type tumor challenge. Compared with scIL-12-expressing CT26 cells, scIL-23-transduced tumors lacked the early response, but achieved comparable antitumor and antimetastatic activity. These results demonstrated that IL-23, like IL-12, provided effective protection against malignant diseases, but it probably acted by different antitumor mechanisms. As a first step in identifying these antitumor mechanisms, tumor challenge studies were performed in immunocompromised hosts and in animals selectively depleted of various lymphocyte populations. The results showed that CD8+ T cells, but not CD4+ T cells or NK cells, were crucial for the antitumor activity of IL-23.
Multidrug and toxin extrusion protein 1-mediated interaction of metformin and Scutellariae radix in rats

Abstract 1. The metformin and Scutellariae radix extract (SB) combination has been previously reported to enhance anti-diabetic activity. Considering that organic cation transporters (OCTs) and multi-drug and toxin extrusion proteins (MATEs) in the liver and kidney are determinant factors on hepatic distribution and renal clearance of metformin, the effects of SB on OCT or MATE-mediated systemic exposure of metformin as well as on glucose tolerance and hypoglycemia were examined. 2. Although SB inhibited metformin uptake through human transporters OCT1 and MATE1 in vitro, the systemic exposures of metformin in vivo rats were not altered after metformin treatment with and without SB due to unchanged renal excretion of metformin. 3. However, 28-day metformin treatment with SB decreased the mRNA level of hepatic MATE1 in rats, resulting in reduced biliary excretion of metformin and thereby higher concentration of metformin in the liver. In addition, in rats with 28-day metformin treatment with SB, glucose tolerance and plasma lactate level were enhanced, while hypoglycemia was not detected. 4. Thus in rats, intervention of SB on transporter-mediated metformin transportation partially improves glucose tolerance without hypoglycemia and increases hepatic distribution of metformin. Also the further investigations in humans are required to clarify the relevance of these findings to the clinical significance.
Understanding beta-hairpin formation.

The kinetics of formation of protein structural motifs (e.g., alpha-helices and beta-hairpins) can provide information about the early events in protein folding. A recent study has used fluorescence measurements to monitor the folding thermodynamics and kinetics of a 16-residue beta-hairpin. In the present paper, we obtain the free energy surface and conformations involved in the folding of an atomistic model for the beta-hairpin from multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations. The results suggest that folding proceeds by a collapse that is downhill in free energy, followed by rearrangement to form a structure with part of the hydrophobic cluster; the hairpin hydrogen bonds propagate outwards in both directions from the partial cluster. Such a folding mechanism differs from the published interpretation of the experimental results, which is based on a helix-coil-type phenomenological model.
A Dynamic Programming Approach Based Stereo Vision Algorithm Improving Object Border Performance

The key issue of stereo vision algorithm using dynamic programming approach is to establish the cost function. Normally the cost of a match is the matching difference or matching error. This is almost the same for different algorithms in this approach. The only difference is in the cost of occlusion. Actually the cost of a known occluded point should be zero, because it is a good match. The difficulty is how to find the occluded region. In this paper, we present a new algorithm in which we first find the occluded region in the image using correlation approach. Then we establish a cost function in which the cost of the occluded region is set to zero. Then we use dynamic programming approach to minimize the energy of this cost function. Experimental results show that this algorithm can achieve excellent results with acceptable time efficiency
Lack of Efficacy of Streptozocin and Doxorubicin in Patients With Advanced Pancreatic Endocrine Tumors

Background:The combination of streptozocin and doxorubicin has been considered the standard palliative chemotherapy regimen in patients with advanced pancreatic endocrine tumors (PETs). However, a recent review failed to confirm high antitumor activity in patients with advanced PETs. Methods:We retrospectively reviewed the records of 16 consecutive patients who received streptozocin and doxorubicin for advanced PETs at Dana Farber/Partners Cancer Care institutions. Baseline patient characteristics, radiographic response to therapy, treatment-related toxicity, progression-free and overall survival were analyzed. Results:One patient demonstrated an objective partial response to therapy (objective response rate [ORR], 6%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0–18%). Six patients achieved stable disease (38%; 95% CI, 14–62%) and 9 patients demonstrated disease progression on initial restaging (56%; 95% CI, 33–77%). The median progression-free survival and overall survival were 3.9 months (95% CI, 2.8–8.8) and 20.2 months (95% CI, 9.7–37.4), respectively. Conclusions:In this retrospective cohort, the combination of streptozocin and doxorubicin failed to demonstrate substantial antitumor activity in patients with advanced PET. Our findings underscore the need for new therapeutic options in this patient population.
Author ' s personal copy Changes in rainfall amount and frequency do not affect the outcome of the interaction between the shrub Retama sphaerocarpa and its neighbouring grasses in two semiarid communities

We evaluated the net outcome of the interaction between the shrub Retama sphaerocarpa, our target plant, and different herbaceous neighbours in response to changes in the magnitude and frequency of rainfall events during three years. The experiment was conducted in natural and anthropogenic grasslands dominated by a perennial stress-tolerator and ruderal annual species, respectively. In spite of the neutral or positive effects of neighbours on water availability, neighbouring plants reduced the performance of Retama juveniles, suggesting competition for resources other than water. The negative effects of grasses on the photochemical efficiency of Retama juveniles decreased with higher water availabilities or heavier irrigation pulses, depending on the grassland studied; however, these effects did not extent to the survival and growth of Retama juveniles. Our findings show the prevalence of competitive interactions among the studied plants, regardless of the water availability and its temporal pattern. These results suggest that positive interactions may not prevail under harsher conditions when shade-intolerant species are involved. This study could be used to further refine our predictions of how planteplant interactions will respond to changes in rainfall, either natural or increased by the ongoing climatic change, in ecosystems where grasseshrubs interactions are prevalent. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
An analysis of existing publications to explore the use of the diffusion of innovations theory and innovation attributes

‘Diffusion of Innovations’ is a theory that explicates the process of introducing new ideas (i.e. technological innovation) into a system via varied channels of communication. The purpose of this paper is to undertake a systematic review of the available literature to examine the current advances in the Diffusion Of Innovations (DOI) theory. The focus remains more inclined towards the diffusion attributes. ISI Web of Knowledge® and Google Scholar were the two rigorously used search engines for our study. These engines fectched a total of 2073 published records that cited Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory. Some of these publications were found to be available for download. Upon conducting a further search, 1145 published records were found to have used the 28 innovation attributes that were identified in a previous article on this subject. Statistical filtering then showed complexity to be the highly used attribute with 834 records having cited this attribute. Further review showed that all the five attributes adopted from Rogers' work of study, represented the most frequently employed attributes for examining the rate of innovation adoption.