Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inferring users' multi-attribute preferences from the reviews for augmenting recommender systems in e-commerce

By now, people are accustomed to getting some personalized recommendations when they are finding movies to watch, music to listen, and so on. All of these recommendations come from recommender systems, and can aid the process of the decision making to avoid the problem of “information overload”. Over the years, there has been much work done both in industry and academia on developing new approaches for recommender systems. However, there are still some hurdles in adapting recommender systems to a broader range of real-life applications. In the e-commerce environment especially with the so called high-risk products (also called high-cost or high-involvement products, such as digital cameras, computers, and cars), because a user does not buy the high-risk product very often, it is normal that s/he is not able to rate many products. For the same reason, the current buyer is often a new user because s/he would not afford to buy the same kind of high-risk product before. The traditional recommender techniques (such as user-based collaborative filtering and content-based methods) can thus not be effectively applicable in this environment, because they largely assume that the users have prior experiences with products. Thus, the “data sparsity” and “new users” are two typical challenging issues that the classical recommender systems cannot well address in high-risk product domains. In some recommender systems, a new user will be asked to indicate his/her preferences on some aspects in order to address the so called cold-start problem via collecting some preferences. Such collected preferences are usually not complete due to unfamilaring with the product domain, which are called partial preferences. In this thesis, we propose to leverage some auxiliary data of online reviewers’ opinions, so as to enrich the partial preferences. With the objective of developing more effective rec-
Interference Model Similarity Index and Its Applications to mmWave Networks: Extended version

In wireless communication networks, interference models are routinely used for tasks such as performance analysis, optimization, and protocol design. These tasks are heavily affected by the accuracy and tractability of the interference models. Yet, quantifying the accuracy of these models remains a major challenge. In this paper, we propose a new index for assessing the accuracy of any interference model under any network scenario. Specifically, it is based on a new index that quantifies the ability of any interference model in correctly predicting harmful interference events, that is, link outages. We consider a specific wireless scenario of both conventional sub-6~GHz and millimeter-wave (mmWave) networks and demonstrate how our index yields insights into the possibility of simplifying the set of dominant interferers, replacing a Nakagami or Rayleigh random fading by an equivalent deterministic channel, and ignoring antenna sidelobes. Our analysis reveals that in highly directional antenna settings with obstructions, even simple interference models (such as the classical protocol model) are accurate, while with omnidirectional antennas, more sophisticated and complex interference models (such as the classical physical model) are necessary. We further use the proposed index to develop a simple interference model for mmWave networks that can significantly simplify design principles of the important procedures for wireless communication, such as beamforming, interference management, scheduling, and topology control. Our new approach makes it possible to adopt the simplest interference model of adequate accuracy for every wireless network.
Describing race, ethnicity, and culture in medical research. Self defined ethnicity is unhelpful.

EDITOR,—Kwame McKenzie and N S Crowcroft's editorial and recommendations on describing race, ethnicity, and culture are an important contribution to the debate on ethnic classification.1 2 While the authors discuss the complexities associated with ethnic classification of various non-white British groups, their recommendations fail to acknowledge the similar difficulties in describing what could be referred to as the indigenous population (that is, those who have been traditionally termed white). There is an implicit assumption in much of the work on inter-ethnic differences that …
The effect of temporal gap identification on speech perception by users of cochlear implants.

PURPOSE This study examined the ability of listeners using cochlear implants (CIs) and listeners with normal hearing (NH) to identify silent gaps of different duration and the relation of this ability to speech understanding in CI users. METHOD Sixteen NH adults and 11 postlingually deafened adults with CIs identified synthetic vowel-like stimuli that were either continuous or contained an intervening silent gap ranging from 15 ms to 90 ms. Cumulative d', an index of discriminability, was calculated for each participant. Consonant and consonant-nucleus-consonant (CNC) word identification tasks were administered to the CI group. RESULTS Overall, the ability to identify stimuli with gaps of different duration was better for the NH group than for the CI group. Seven CI users had cumulative d' scores that were no higher than those of any NH listener, and their CNC word scores ranged from 0% to 30%. The other 4 CI users had cumulative d' scores within the range of the NH group, and their CNC word scores ranged from 46% to 68%. For the CI group, cumulative d' scores were significantly correlated with their speech testing scores. CONCLUSIONS The ability to identify silent gap duration may help explain individual differences in speech perception by CI users.
Employment Spillover Effects of Rural Inpatient Healthcare Facilities

This report estimates the share of wage/salary employment in inpatient healthcare facilities—hospitals, nursing homes, and other residential care facilities—versus other industries in rural counties during 2001-15, and the spillover effects of additional inpatient facility employment, in rural counties. On average, we find no clear spillover effect of inpatient facility employment on employment in other sectors, i.e., the employment multiplier is approximately 1. The multiplier is larger in rural micropolitan counties (1.24 total jobs) than in the most rural (noncore) counties (0.89 total jobs), but neither of these estimates is significantly different from 1, implying the absence of spillovers.
DISTURBANCES OF VISION BY CEREBRAL LESIONS

ABOUT 18 months ago I was able to present to this Section with my colleague, Colonel Lister, certain clinical observations on the disturbances of vision produced by gunshot injuries of the visual cortex and of the optic radiations. From these we drew certain conclusions on the cortical representation of the retina, and particularly on the segmental correspondence of different areas of the retina with separate zones of the visual cortex. Our chief conclusions were: 1. The upper half of each retina is represented in the dorsal, and the lower in the ventral part of each visual area. 2. The centre for macular or central vision lies in the posterior extremities of the visual areas, probably in the margins and the lateral surfaces of the occipital poles. The macular region has not a bilateral representation. 3. The centre for vision subserved by the periphery of the retinae is probably situated in the anterior ends of the visual areas, and the serial concentric zones of the retina from the macula to the periphery
Aircraft‐based observations of air–sea turbulent fluxes around the British Isles

Observations of turbulent fluxes of momentum, heat and moisture from low‐level aircraft data are presented. Fluxes are calculated using the eddy covariance technique from flight legs typically ∼40 m above the sea surface. Over 400 runs of 2 min (∼12 km) from 26 flights are evaluated. Flight legs are mainly from around the British Isles although a small number are from around Iceland and Norway. Sea‐surface temperature (SST) observations from two on‐board sensors (the ARIES interferometer and a Heimann radiometer) and a satellite‐based analysis (OSTIA) are used to determine an improved SST estimate. Most of the observations are from moderate to strong wind speed conditions, the latter being a regime short of validation data for the bulk flux algorithms that are necessary for numerical weather prediction and climate models. Observations from both statically stable and unstable atmospheric boundary‐layer conditions are presented. There is a particular focus on several flights made as part of the DIAMET (Diabatic influence on mesoscale structures in extratropical storms) project.
Modeling a powered wheelchair with slipping and gravitational disturbances on inclined and non-inclined surfaces

Wheelchairs are broadly accepted and are widespread because of the assistance they provide to people with limited mobility. The design of a good controller generally involves the formulation of a comprehensive wheelchair model. Most dynamic models in the literature presume non-inclined planer surfaces within-doors, and therefore fail to take the combined effects of both gravitational forces and rolling friction on the usable-traction into consideration. Wheel-slip situations are also commonly neglected. This paper contributes to wheelchair modeling by proposing and formulating a dynamic model that considers the effects of rolling friction and gravitational potential on the wheelchair’s road-load force, on both inclined and non-inclined surfaces. The dynamic model is derived through the Euler Lagrange procedure, and wheel slip is determined by an approach that reduces the convectional number of slip-detection encoders. In the closed-loop model, the input-output feedback controller is proposed for tracking the user inputs by torque compensation. The optimality of the resulting minimum-phase closed-loop system is then ensured through the performance index of the non-linear continuous-time generalized predictive control with good simulation results.
Precise Annotation of Transmembrane Segments with Garlic - Free Molecular Visualization Program

The comparison of transmembrane secondary structure prediction programs requires precise annotations of transmembrane segments of known proteins. The annotations which may be found in different databases differ significantly due to the lack of standard method for annotation of transmembrane segments. Simple methods for the placement of bilayer membrane with respect to the known 3D structure of membrane protein were developed to improve the precise determination of transmembrane portion of the protein. The methods were implemented in freely available, open source molecular visualization program called garlic. The program, complete with the source code and extensive documentation, may be found at the site: http://garlic.mefos. hr/garlic
Prolonged attenuation of cold-induced hypertension by adenoviral delivery of renin antisense.

BACKGROUND Renin has been linked to the pathogenesis of some forms of hypertension, including cold-induced hypertension (CIH). Although several antihypertensive drugs that inhibit angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) and angiotensin II (Ang II) type 1 (AT(1)) receptors are available, they are short-lasting and have side effects. Inhibition of renin [the first and rate-limiting step of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS)] would provide an inhibition of the entire RAS. Thus, we developed an antisense approach for specific inhibition of renin based on the genetic design. The objective of this study was to test our hypothesis that adenoviral delivery of renin antisense inhibits renin and attenuates CIH. METHODS Recombinant adenoviruses carrying rat renin antisense (rAdv.RRA) and LacZ reporter gene (rAdv.LacZ) were constructed and used for in vivo gene transfer via intravenous injection. Four groups of rats were used (six rats/group). Blood pressure did not differ among the four groups during the control period at room temperature (25 degrees C). Two groups of rats received rAdv.RRA (2.5 x 10(9) pfu/rat, intravenously), while the other two groups received the same dose of rAdv.LacZ and served as controls. After gene delivery, one rAdv.LacZ-treated and one rAdv.RRA-treated group were exposed to cold (5 degrees C), while the remaining groups were kept at 25 degrees C. Blood pressure was monitored weekly during cold exposure. A 24-hour urine sample was collected during weeks 1, 3, and 5 for measuring urinary aldosterone excretion. At the end of week 5, all animals were killed and blood was collected for measurement of plasma renin activity (PRA), total plasma renin, plasma active renin, and plasma aldosterone. Vascular Ang II contents were measured in all rats. RESULTS Blood pressure of the rAdv.LacZ-treated group rose significantly within 2 weeks of exposure to cold and reached 158.2 +/- 6.4 mm Hg by week 5. In contrast, blood pressure (117.1 +/- 5.3 mm Hg) of the cold-exposed group treated with rAdv.RRA did not increase until 5 weeks after exposure to cold. Thus, a single dose of rAdv.RRA prevented CIH for at least 5 weeks. rAdv.RRA abolished the cold-induced increases in PRA, total plasma renin, plasma active renin, vascular Ang II, and plasma and urine aldosterone, indicating effective inhibition of the entire RAS. CONCLUSION rAdv.RRA effectively inhibited the entire RAS and produced prolonged attenuation of CIH. Antisense inhibition of renin may be a novel and ideal approach for long-term control of hypertension.
Combining Semantic Word Classes and Sub-Word Unit Speech Recognition for Robust OOV Detection

Out-of-vocabulary words (OOVs) are often the main reason for the failure of tasks like automated voice searches or humanmachine dialogs. This is especially true if rare but task-relevant content words, e.g. person or location names, are not in the recognizer’s vocabulary. Since applications like spoken dialog systems use the result of the speech recognizer to extract a semantic representation of a user utterance, the detection of OOVs as well as their (semantic) word class can support to manage a dialog successfully. In this paper we suggest to combine two wellknown approaches in the context of OOV detection: semantic word classes and OOV models based on sub-word units. With our system, which builds upon the widely used Kaldi speech recognition toolkit, we show on two different data sets that – compared to other methods – such a combination improves OOV detection performance for open word classes at a given false alarm rate. Another result of our approach is a reduction of the word error rate (WER).
Public private partnerships for hospitals

Despite the growing prevalence of Public–Private Partnerships in healthcare, scholars have paid little attention to their consequences for the workforce. Public–Private Partnerships may have important consequences in labour-intensive services such as healthcare, since staff reductions and higher working loads may lead to a decrease in service quality and patient safety. In this paper, we analyse the extent to which Public–Private Partnership schemes have influenced employment in Madrid, one of the most enthusiastic adopters of Public–Private Partnership models in Spain. To do so, we compare clinical staff employment levels across three types of hospital management models, including two types of Public–Private Partnerships. Our findings illustrate that clinical staff employment levels seem to be substantially lower in Public–Private Partnership hospitals than in directly managed public hospitals, particularly as regards nursing staff, and in those types of hospitals where the private sector manages both clinical and non-clinical staff.
Fuzzy-controlled individual-cell equaliser using discontinuous inductor current-mode Cûk convertor for lithium-ion chemistries

An intelligent battery equalisation-scheme based on fuzzy-logic control (FLC) is presented to adaptively control the equalising process for series-connected lithium–ion batteries. The proposed individual-cell equalisation scheme (ICE) is a bidirectional DC–DC convertor based on the Cuk convertor operated in the discontinuous inductor current mode (DICM). The proposed method can be used to achieve a zero-current-switching (ZCS) cell-balancing control scheme to reduce the switching losses in MOSFET switches. Further, a fuzzy-logic-controlled strategy is constructed with a set of membership functions to prescribe the cell equalising behaviour within a safe equalising region for reduced cell-equalisation time. The simulation and experimental results show the advantage of the predicted equalising performance for lithium–ion battery stacks. The proposed fuzzy-logic-control battery-equalisation controller (FLC-BEC) abridges the equalisation time by about 30% compared with the equaliser without FLC. The power losses of the MOSFET switch are significantly reduced by about 33.8%, and the equalisation efficiency is increased by about 8.5% compared with the same equalisation scheme in continuous-inductor-current mode (CICM). The proposed equalisation method maintains safe operations during the charge/discharge state to increase the charge capacity of lithium–ion battery-pack cells.
Moderating Business Environment Influence on Individual Entrepreneurial Competence and Entrepreneurial Orientation Toward Business Performance

"Objective – This article aims to analyze the influence of moderating hostile and dynamic business environment variables on Individual Entrepreneurial Competence (IEC) and Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) on Business Performance. Methodology/Technique – This study is conducted on Credit Union (microfinance), especially in West Kalimantan, using the Structural Equation Model technique. Findings – The results of the analysis show that the Individual Entrepreneurial Competence variables and Entrepreneurial Orientation have a positive influence on Business Performance. Meanwhile, Individual Entrepreneurial Competence and Entrepreneurial Orientation have a positive and greater influence on Business Performance in hostile environments. On the other hand, Individual Entrepreneurial Competence has a positive effect on Business Performance, but tend to be weak on dynamic environment. The Entrepreneurial Orientation has a positive and stronger impact on Business Performance in a dynamic environment. Novelty – The study helps to develop business environment for nurturing entrepreneurship. "
Plasmin-induced Migration of Endothelial Cells

Angiostatin, a plasminogen fragment containing 3–4 N-terminal kringle domains, is a potent inhibitor of tumor-induced angiogenesis, but its mechanism of action is unclear. Angiostatin is a ligand for integrin αvβ3 but does not induce stress fiber formation upon integrin binding, suggesting that angiostatin is a potential integrin antagonist. Plasmin, the parent molecule of angiostatin and a major extracellular protease, induces platelet aggregation, migration of peripheral blood monocytes, and release of arachidonate and leukotriene from several cell types. In the current study, we found that plasmin specifically bound to αvβ3 through the kringle domains and induced migration of endothelial cells. In contrast, angiostatin did not induce cell migration. Notably, angiostatin, anti-αvβ3 antibodies, RGD-peptide, and a serine protease inhibitor effectively blocked plasmin-induced cell migration. These results suggest that plasmin-induced migration of endothelial cells requires αvβ3 and the catalytic activity of plasmin and that this process is a potential target for the inhibitory activity of angiostatin.
Political Relations and Overseas Stock Exchange Listing: Evidence from Chinese State-Owned Enterprises

Using a sample of China's partially privatized state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that emerge in global equity markets, this paper examines the decision to list overseas and its consequences. We find that overseas listing of Chinese SOEs is primarily determined by politicians' economic and political agendas, not by the firms' desire to fund growth and expand foreign sales. While overseas listing is motivated by politicians' incentives rather than individual firms' needs, we also find that overseas listed SOEs have more professional board of directors, less earnings management, and higher investment efficiency than their domestically listed counterparts. Our additional analysis finds evidence suggesting that the observed consequences in firm behaviors are due to increased scrutiny of reputational financial intermediaries. Finally, we find that overseas listed Chinese SOEs have better post-listing stock performance, less underpricing of initial public offering, and greater firm valuation. Taken together, the evidence shows that in overseas listing, politicians are trading off consumption of private benefits for the pursuit of national economic and political agendas. Our study adds to the literature by finding evidence consistent with overseas listing being a credible mechanism constraining politicians from taking excessive private benefits and improving efficiency for partially privatized Chinese SOEs.
Differential acylated ghrelin, peptide YY3-36, appetite, and food intake responses to equivalent energy deficits created by exercise and food restriction.

CONTEXT Acute energy deficits imposed by food restriction increase appetite and energy intake; however, these outcomes remain unchanged when energy deficits are imposed by exercise. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to determine the potential role of acylated ghrelin and peptide YY(3-36) (PYY(3-36)) in mediating appetite and energy intake responses to identical energy deficits imposed by food restriction and exercise. DESIGN Twelve healthy males completed three 9-h trials (exercise deficit, food deficit, and control) in a randomized counterbalanced design. Participants ran for 90 min (70% of VO(2) max) at the beginning of the exercise deficit trial and then rested for 7.5 h. Participants remained sedentary throughout the food deficit and control trials. Test meals were consumed by participants at 2 and 4.75 h in all trials. The amount provided in the food deficit trial was restricted so that an energy deficit (equivalent to that imposed by exercise) was induced relative to control. Participants were permitted access to a buffet meal at 8 h. RESULTS The energy deficits imposed by food restriction (4820 ± 151 kJ) and exercise (4715 ± 113 kJ) were similar. Appetite and ad libitum energy intake responded in a compensatory fashion to food restriction yet were not influenced by exercise. Plasma acylated ghrelin concentrations increased, whereas PYY(3-36) decreased, in response to food restriction (two-way ANOVA, trial × time interaction, P < 0.001 for each). Exercise did not induce such compensatory responses. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest a mediating role of acylated ghrelin and PYY(3-36) in determining divergent feeding responses to energy deficits imposed by food restriction and exercise.