Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bayesian graphic model based user preference prediction for future personalized service provisioning

In the era of big data, gathering data becomes increasingly cheaper, and more and more different types of data is capable to be collected and stored. Accordingly the traditional user independent service provisioning is no longer satisfying. Further performance improvement can be achieved by making use of the collected personalized data. In this paper we pursue predicting user preference given the personalized data. A Bayesian Graphic Model is proposed accordingly. Because of the nature of proposed model, there is no closed form solution for optimization of model parameters. An iteratively expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is therefore employed for model training. Furthermore, a Monte Carlo method is also used to simplify the calculation in the expectation step. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, a MovieLens [1] data set is used and the experimental results show that the performance of the proposed approach has a significant performance improvement comparing with the traditional method.
Integrin αvβ1 Is a Receptor for Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus

ABSTRACT Infection by field strains of Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is initiated by binding to certain species of arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD)-dependent integrin including αvβ3 and the epithelial integrin αvβ6. In this report we show that the integrin αvβ1, when expressed as a human/hamster heterodimer on transfected CHOB2 cells, is a receptor for FMDV. Virus binding and infection mediated by αvβ1 was inefficient in the presence of physiological concentrations of calcium and magnesium but were significantly enhanced by reagents that activate the integrin and promote ligand binding. The ability of chimeric α5/αv integrin subunits, in association with the β1 chain, to bind FMDV and mediate infection matched the ligand binding specificity of αvβ1, not α5β1, thus providing further evidence for the receptor role of αvβ1. In addition, data are presented suggesting that amino acid residues near the RGD motif may be important for differentiating between the binding specificities of αvβ1 and αvβ6.
Archaeology, science-based archaeology and the Mediterranean Bronze Age metals trade: a contribution to the debate

The current consensus is outlined about the application of lead isotope analyses to metal provenance studies and to the unravelling of the Mediterranean Bronze Age copper trade, with special reference to copper oxhide ingots. Various misconceptions, especially some of those contained in Knapp (1999, 2000), are corrected. It is shown that there is no need to fall back on hypotheses based upon the Mediterranean-wide mixing/recycling of copper metals to explain the lead isotope characteristics of post-1250 BC copper oxhide ingots, since there is a good isotopic coincidence between these ingots and the Apliki region ore deposits in Cyprus. Weaknesses are exposed in the hypotheses of direct or indirect pooling of Cypriot ores, and of the proposed widespread recycling of metals in a Mediterranean-wide koine, particularly since there is no evidence for a homogeneity of lead isotope composition in artefacts and no tin in the oxhide ingots.
Recognition of finger-pointing direction using color clustering and image segmentation

An accurate method of recognizing finger-pointing direction using multiple cameras is proposed. Input images are segmented by color clustering prior to shape analysis. Some restrictions in previous methods, such as narrowness of operation area and predefined skin color, are removed. Finger-pointing recognition in eight directions is achieved with an average of 90% recall and 93% precision.
Effects of Platelet-Rich Plasma on Proliferation and Myofibroblastic Differentiation in Human Dermal Fibroblasts

AbstractPlatelet-rich plasma (PRP) is plasma that is produced from autologous blood, and its usefulness in plastic surgery and dermal wound healing has garnered attention in recent years. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of PRP and platelet-poor plasma on the proliferation and differentiation of skin fibroblasts into myofibroblasts and on wound contraction using Western blotting, immunofluorescence staining, and collagen gels containing an embedded fibroblast model. PRP promotes proliferation of human dermal fibroblasts. PRP addition enhanced the expression of alpha-smooth muscle actin protein, a myofibroblast marker, as shown by immunofluorescence staining and Western blotting. PRP-treated groups demonstrated more marked contraction in the collagen gel model than the platelet-poor plasma and vehicle groups. PRP promotes proliferation, causes the differentiation of human dermal fibroblasts into myofibroblasts and promotes wound contraction, thus providing a potential therapeutic agent for skin wound healing.
Prediction of breast cancer risk by genetic risk factors, overall and by hormone receptor status

Objective There is increasing interest in adding common genetic variants identified through genome wide association studies (GWAS) to breast cancer risk prediction models. First results from such models showed modest benefits in terms of risk discrimination. Heterogeneity of breast cancer as defined by hormone-receptor status has not been considered in this context. In this study we investigated the predictive capacity of 32 GWAS-detected common variants for breast cancer risk, alone and in combination with classical risk factors, and for tumours with different hormone receptor status. Material and methods Within the Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium, we analysed 6009 invasive breast cancer cases and 7827 matched controls of European ancestry, with data on classical breast cancer risk factors and 32 common gene variants identified through GWAS. Discriminatory ability with respect to breast cancer of specific hormone receptor-status was assessed with the age adjusted and cohort-adjusted concordance statistic (AUROCa). Absolute risk scores were calculated with external reference data. Integrated discrimination improvement was used to measure improvements in risk prediction. Results We found a small but steady increase in discriminatory ability with increasing numbers of genetic variants included in the model (difference in AUROCa going from 2.7% to 4%). Discriminatory ability for all models varied strongly by hormone receptor status. Discussion and conclusions Adding information on common polymorphisms provides small but statistically significant improvements in the quality of breast cancer risk prediction models. We consistently observed better performance for receptor-positive cases, but the gain in discriminatory quality is not sufficient for clinical application.
Defense mechanisms in patients with fibromyalgia and major depressive disorder

Background and objectives: Fibromyalgia (FM) and depression has been suggested to share a common underlying etiology. Few studies have investigated the role of emotional regulation processes in FM compared to depressive disorders. The purpose of the current study was to explore the use of defense mechanisms in FM patients with and without comorbid lifetime depressive disorder (LDD), and to compare their use of defenses to healthy control subjects and patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Methods: A total of 91 participants were included (17 with FM and LDD, 25 with FM but not LDD, 24 with MDD, and 25 healthy controls). Depressive disorders were identified by using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Axis I disorders (SCID-I). All diagnosis of FM were confirmed to meet the American College of Rheumatology’s criteria for FM. The Life Style Index (LSI) was used to measure defense mechanisms. Results and Conclusions: Group comparisons indicated that MDD patients and FM patients with LDD made significantly more use of defenses than healthy controls, whereas FM patients without LDD made significantly less use of defenses than both MDD patients and FM patients with LDD, but did not differ from healthy controls. Follow up analyses indicated significant main effects for the defense mechanisms of regression, compensation and displacement. This study suggests that FM and depression do not share common risk factors in terms of restricted affects or avoidance of conflicted feelings. Received 1 October 2007 Revised 26 June 2008 Accepted 11 July 2008 186 TORMOD LANDMARK ET AL.
TDD = too dumb developers? Implications of Test-Driven Development on maintainability and comprehension of software

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a development discipline prescribing writing tests beforehand writing the implementation code, which then shall pass the tests. Several criticisms addressed TDD's capability of delivering well-structured code, mainly because of the short focus on the features needed right now without much looking forward. So the main threat possibly introduced by TDD lies in the lack of maintainability and evolvability of the resulting system. The goal of the working session is to gather opinions, studies, and mostly experiences related to the maintenance implications of TDD adoption. The working session will be organized around position papers presented and discussed by the participants.
A Fuzzy Strategy for Planning Centralized Access Networks in the Installation of Hybrid Fiber Radio Systems

5G networks have arrived and are able to shift paradigms within the areas of connectivity, maintainability, scalability and availability. Their aim is to ensure that users can remain online with their devices at any time and in any place. In light of this, solutions for centralized networks are becoming attractive since they are manageable and low-cost. In these conditions, the use of computing techniques such as fuzzy logic benefits the supervision and planning of networks by optimizing and controlling resources as well as managing the system. However, planning a centralized network tends to raise challenges in the optical sectors that are located between the telecommunications center and the base station. Technologies such as radio over fiber are being examined to meet the demands in the fronthaul market, although they raise many other challenges. For this reason, in this study, we have adopted an intelligent strategy to determine in a balanced way which radio over fiber signals should be allocated in the optical sector. This strategy is implemented using fuzzy logic and may be used in decision making to plan the future of centralized networks. The results show that it is possible to make tradeoffs between the capital expenditure and performance of the system.
PRODUÇÃO ENXUTA NO SETOR DE SERVIÇOS: CASO DO HOSPITAL DE CLÍNICAS DE PORTO ALEGRE - HCPA

O setor de servicos vem apresentando um rapido crescimento na economia mundial, o que tem feito com que as empresas busquem se manter competitivas eliminando desperdicios e reduzindo custos, alem de estar otimizando seus processos. A utilizacao de tecnicas e ferramentas da producao enxuta, que ate entao eram exclusivas das manufaturas, vem crescendo rapidamente em empresas de servicos como, por exemplo, no setor da saude. Desenvolver um fluxo enxuto de valor expoe as fontes dos desperdicios, significando que as pessoas em todas as funcoes do negocio podem ter que mudar os seus habitos. O presente artigo visa diagnosticar a aplicabilidade dos principios da producao enxuta em uma empresa prestadora de servicos de saude, analisando as possibilidades de melhorias e de utilizacao de principios enxutos nos processos existentes atraves do mapeamento do processo. Constata-se que e promissora a adaptacao da producao enxuta para incrementar a qualidade e o desempenho do setor de servicos.
Stochastic method for isotope labeling systems Stochastic simulation algorithm for isotope labeling metabolic networks

Carbon isotope labeling method is a standard metabolic engineering tool for flux quantification in living cells. To cope with the high dimensionality of isotope labeling systems, diverse algorithms have been developed to reduce the number of variables or operations in metabolic flux analysis (13C-MFA), but lacks generalizability to dynamic metabolic responses (13C-DMFA). In this study, we present a stochastic simulation algorithm (SSA) derived from the chemical master equation of the isotope labeling system. This algorithm allows to compute the time evolution of isotopomer and metabolite concentrations in non-steady conditions where the computational time only scales with the number of reactions of the metabolic system, not the number of isotopomers. The computational efficiency of the algorithm is benchmarked with two metabolic networks of different sizes and topologies. SSA method for the forward simulation of the isotope labeling system can be easily combined with Monte Carlo Markov Chain method for the inverse problem of dynamic flux estimation.
Integrating Scientifically Based and Design Experiment Research

This study explored tradeoffs between two research methodologies ‐ scientifically based research and design experiments. We conducted this exploration through a case study of one teacher's four-year implementation of a multimedia learning environment called Astronomy Village®. During the first year of her implementation, she participated in the scientifically based summative evaluation of Astronomy Village. Her students successfully learned complex solar system concepts. In subsequent years, the teacher customized her implementation to meet local needs. An analysis of her design decisions and resulting learning outcomes reveals that the subsequent implementations were more successful than the first-year implementation. Results indicate the importance of tracking long-term implementation. They also reveal tradeoffs between scientifically based and design experiment research.
A New Resource for German Causal Language

We present a new resource for German causal language, with annotations in context for verbs, nouns and prepositions. Our dataset includes 4,390 annotated instances for more than 150 different triggers. The annotation scheme distinguishes three different types of causal events (CONSEQUENCE , MOTIVATION, PURPOSE). We also provide annotations for semantic roles, i.e. of the cause and effect for the causal event as well as the actor and affected party, if present. In the paper, we present inter-annotator agreement scores for our dataset and discuss problems for annotating causal language. Finally, we present experiments where we frame causal annotation as a sequence labelling problem and report baseline results for the prediciton of causal arguments and for predicting different types of causation.
Ciron: a New Benchmark Dataset for Chinese Irony Detection

Automatic Chinese irony detection is a challenging task, and it has a strong impact on linguistic research. However, Chinese irony detection often lacks labeled benchmark datasets. In this paper, we introduce Ciron, the first Chinese benchmark dataset available for irony detection for machine learning models. Ciron includes more than 8.7K posts, collected from Weibo, a micro blogging platform. Most importantly, Ciron is collected with no pre-conditions to ensure a much wider coverage. Evaluation on seven different machine learning classifiers proves the usefulness of Ciron as an important resource for Chinese irony detection.
Reproduction and Replication: A Case Study with Automatic Essay Scoring

As in many experimental sciences, reproducibility of experiments has gained ever more attention in the NLP community. This paper presents our reproduction efforts of an earlier study of automatic essay scoring (AES) for determining the proficiency of second language learners in a multilingual setting. We present three sets of experiments with different objectives. First, as prescribed by the LREC 2020 REPROLANG shared task, we rerun the original AES system using the code published by the original authors on the same dataset. Second, we repeat the same experiments on the same data with a different implementation. And third, we test the original system on a different dataset and a different language. Most of our findings are in line with the findings of the original paper. Nevertheless, there are some discrepancies between our results and the results presented in the original paper. We report and discuss these differences in detail. We further go into some points related to confirmation of research findings through reproduction, including the choice of the dataset, reporting and accounting for variability, use of appropriate evaluation metrics, and making code and data available. We also discuss the varying uses and differences between the terms reproduction and replication, and we argue that reproduction, the confirmation of conclusions through independent experiments in varied settings is more valuable than exact replication of the published values.
Understanding the experiences of people with disfigurements: An integration of four models of social and psychological functioning

Both psychological (Cash, 1996; Partridge, 1998; Leary et al ., 1998) and sociological (Goffman, 1968) models have been used to explain the personal and social consequences of cosmetic blemishes. In this study, people with the skin disease vitiligo were asked to describe a situation in which their condition had recently affected their lives. Consistent with theories of body image disturbance, incidents usually involved a triggering event when concerns about appearance were raised due to bodily exposure or enacted stigma. These events led respondents to be vigilant to others' behaviour, to be self-conscious and to attribute the cause of the event to their appearance. Theories of social anxiety could be used to account for how the respondents used impression management strategies such as avoidance and concealment. Respondents described how they could be uncertain as to how to deal with others' behaviour, illustrating the relevance of social skills models. In addition, avoidance/concealment had a number of social and personal costs, including the loss of valued activities, reluctance to develop intimate relationships and continuing anxiety. Thus, theories of body image, social anxiety, social skills and the sociology of stigma could be used to understand the respondents' experiences. It seems likely that therapeutic interventions based on different models are useful because they influence different aspects of the above process.
Online Intelligent Demand Management of Plug-In Electric Vehicles in Future Smart Parking Lots

This paper proposes an online intelligent demand coordination of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in distribution systems. The proposed method is based on the assignment of scores to PEVs through a fuzzy expert system. As well, without violation of grid operational constraints, the PEVs are optimally charged in order to maximize the owners' satisfaction in terms of the energy delivered. The optimization problem of online PEV charging is defined as mixed-integer nonlinear programming. Simulation on a typical distribution network proves the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Results of the analysis indicate that for more critical PEVs, which have shorter parking duration and higher required charging time, the proposed solution outperforms in more robust energy delivery to the PEV and, accordingly, more satisfaction for the owner.
Accelerated High-Quality Mutual-Information Based Word Clustering

Word clustering groups words that exhibit similar properties. One popular method for this is Brown clustering, which uses short-range distributional information to construct clusters. Specifically, this is a hard hierarchical clustering with a fixed-width beam that employs bi-grams and greedily minimizes global mutual information loss. The result is word clusters that tend to outperform or complement other word representations, especially when constrained by small datasets. However, Brown clustering has high computational complexity and does not lend itself to parallel computation. This, together with the lack of efficient implementations, limits their applicability in NLP. We present efficient implementations of Brown clustering and the alternative Exchange clustering as well as a number of methods to accelerate the computation of both hierarchical and flat clusters. We show empirically that clusters obtained with the accelerated method match the performance of clusters computed using the original methods.
Perceived quality factors of location-based apps on trust, perceived privacy risk, and continuous usage intention

ABSTRACT Numerous location-based services (LBS) studies have suggested that the risk of disclosing personal privacy hinders consumers from adopting LBS, whereas scant attention has focused on clarifying how to mitigate the perceived privacy risk of using LBS. This quantitative study focuses on the effects of consumer quality perceptions (i.e. information quality, system quality, and service quality) on their trust in LBS, which consequently affects perceived privacy risk and continued usage intention towards LBS. Research data were collected through a market survey website; 1399 valid questionnaires were collected. Structural equation modelling analysis was applied to the data. The results revealed that information quality, system quality, and service quality were positively related to perceived trust. Perceived trust also correlated negatively with perceived privacy risk, but positively with continued usage intention. A managerial implication drawn from the findings is that LBS providers should develop more useful user interfaces or provide timely, personalised services to reduce perceived privacy risk and strengthen LBS continued usage intention.
Targeting prion protein interactions in cancer

ABSTRACT In recent years, prion protein (PrPC) has been considered as a promising target molecule for cancer therapies, due its direct or indirect participation in tumor growth, metastasis, and resistance to cell death induced by chemotherapy. PrPC functions as a scaffold protein, forming multiprotein complexes on the plasma membrane, which elicits distinct signaling pathways involved in diverse biological phenomena and could be modulated depending on the cell type, complex composition, and organization. In addition, PrPC and its partners participate in self-renewal of embryonic, tissue-specific stem cells and cancer stem cells, which are suggested to be responsible for the origin, maintenance, relapse, and dissemination of tumors. Interference with protein–protein interaction has been recognized as an important therapeutic strategy in cancer; indeed, the possible interference in PrPC engagement with specific partners is a novel strategy. Recently, our group successfully used that approach to interfere with the interaction between PrPC and HSP-90/70 organizing protein (HOP, also known as stress-inducible protein 1 - STI1) to control the growth of human glioblastoma in animal models. Thus, PrPC-organized multicomplexes have emerged as feasible candidates for anti-tumor therapy, warranting further exploration.