Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Causal inference with a continuous treatment and outcome: Alternative estimators for parametric dose-response functions with applications

Title of dissertation: CAUSAL INFERENCE WITH A CONTINUOUS TREATMENT AND OUTCOME: ALTERNATIVE ESTIMATORS FOR PARAMETRIC DOSE-RESPONSE FUNCTIONS WITH APPLICATIONS Douglas Galagate, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Joseph L. Schafer Office of the Associate Director for Research and Methodology U.S. Census Bureau and Dr. Paul J. Smith Mathematical Statistics Program Department of Mathematics University of Maryland Causal inference with a continuous treatment is a relatively under-explored problem. In this dissertation, we adopt the potential outcomes framework. Potential outcomes are responses that would be seen for a unit under all possible treatments. In an observational study where the treatment is continuous, the potential outcomes are an uncountably infinite set indexed by treatment dose. We parameterize this unobservable set as a linear combination of a finite number of basis functions whose coefficients vary across units. This leads to new techniques for estimating the population average dose-response function (ADRF). Some techniques require a model for the treatment assignment given covariates, some require a model for predicting the potential outcomes from covariates, and some require both. We develop these techniques using a framework of estimating functions, compare them to existing methods for continuous treatments, and simulate their performance in a population where the ADRF is linear and the models for the treatment and/or outcomes may be misspecified. We also extend the comparisons to a data set of lottery winners in Massachusetts. Next, we describe the methods and functions in our R package causaldrf using data from the National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES) and Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) as examples. Additionally, we analyze the National Growth and Health Study (NGHS) data set and deal with the issue of missing data. Lastly, we discuss future research goals and possible extensions. CAUSAL INFERENCE WITH A CONTINUOUS TREATMENT AND OUTCOME: ALTERNATIVE ESTIMATORS FOR PARAMETRIC DOSE-RESPONSE FUNCTIONS WITH APPLICATIONS.
Why Ownership Matters? Entrepreneurship and the Restructuring of Enterprises in Central Europe

This paper, based on a study of mid-sized firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, seeks to explain the reasons behind the marked impact of ownership on firm performance which has been observed in a number of studies in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. Focusing in particular on the differential impact of ownership on revenue and cost performance, the paper argues that privatized firms controlled by outside investors are more entrepreneurial than those controlled by corporate insiders or the state. The paper provides evidence that all state and privatized firms in transition economies engage in similar types of restructuring, but that product restructuring by firms owned by outsider investors is significantly more effective (in terms of revenue generation) than that by firms with other types of ownership. The paper also examines the impact of managerial turnover on revenue performance, as well as differences among managers of firms with different types of ownership, and concludes that the more entrepreneurial behavior of outsider-owned firms is due primarily to incentive effects, rather than human capital effects, of privatization. More specifically, the authors argue that the success of outsider-owned firms is due to their greater readiness to accept risks (as evidenced by the higher variance of the revenues generated by restructuring) and a lesser need to defend, and account for, their managerial decisions.
Key Generation Over Wiretap Models With Non-Causal Side Information

The key agreement problem over a state-dependent wiretap channel with a parallel one-way public channel in the forward direction is studied. It is assumed that the channel state information (CSI) is non-causally known at the transmitter. In this paper, the effect of the public channel and the CSI on the key generation is investigated, and the key capacity as a function of public channel capacity CP, CK (CP), is sought for a discrete memoryless (DM) model and a Gaussian model, in which the CSI is an additive white Gaussian interference. For each model, a lower bound and an upper bound on the key capacity are derived, and CK (∞) is achieved as the bounds are asymptotically tight. For any DM wiretap channel, it is shown that there exists a finite capacity CP* beyond which CK (CP) = CK (CP*). If the CSI is also fully known at the legitimate receiver, it is proved that the public channel has no effect on the key capacity. For the Gaussian model, the achievable key rate is a strictly increasing function of CP in general. In addition, CK (CP) is attained in both the low signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) regime and the high SIR regime. In the low SIR regime, the public channel cooperates with the transmitter for the key generation from the known interference. In the high SIR regime, however, the public channel makes negligible contribution to the key generation.
Large oncosomes contain distinct protein cargo and represent a separate functional class of tumor-derived extracellular vesicles

Large oncosomes (LO) are atypically large (1-10μm diameter) cancer-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs), originating from the shedding of membrane blebs and associated with advanced disease. We report that 25% of the proteins, identified by a quantitative proteomics analysis, are differentially represented in large and nano-sized EVs from prostate cancer cells. Proteins enriched in large EVs included enzymes involved in glucose, glutamine and amino acid metabolism, all metabolic processes relevant to cancer. Glutamine metabolism was altered in cancer cells exposed to large EVs, an effect that was not observed upon treatment with exosomes. Large EVs exhibited discrete buoyant densities in iodixanol (OptiPrepTM) gradients. Fluorescent microscopy of large EVs revealed an appearance consistent with LO morphology, indicating that these structures can be categorized as LO. Among the proteins enriched in LO, cytokeratin 18 (CK18) was one of the most abundant (within the top 5th percentile) and was used to develop an assay to detect LO in the circulation and tissues of mice and patients with prostate cancer. These observations indicate that LO represent a discrete EV type that may play a distinct role in tumor progression and that may be a source of cancer-specific markers.
Presence and Performance as a Function of Teammate Agency and Individual Differences in a Video Game

Past research has examined the effects of agency on human performance and affect (e.g., Nowak & Biocca, 2001; Weibel et al., 2008), but results and design recommendations are still inconclusive. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the individual differences in video game efficacy, immersive tendency, avatar characteristics, and the way avatars impact presence and performance within a game-based training environment. Twenty six college students were told they were working with either a computer-programmed teammate or a human teammate who provided information about how to complete twelve specific tasks in a first-person shooter game, Arma 3TM. Mean comparisons indicate some differences in performance and presence as a function of teammate agency, but none of these differences were statistically significant due to low observed power. We conclude that this common method of manipulating teammate agency in the literature may not be salient for some tasks.
Corporate Profit, Entrepreneurship Theory and Business Ethics

Economic profit is produced by entrepreneurs, those special individuals able to detect and seize as yet unexploited market opportunities. In general capitalist firms manage to deliver positive profits even in the most competitive environments. They can do so thanks to internal entrepreneurs, a subset of their employees able to drive change and develop innovation in the workplace. This paper argues that the goal of profit maximization is fully consistent with the corporation doing good for society. However, there is little justification for corporations to transfer the whole economic profit to shareholders. Economic agents entitled to receive the economic profit are precisely those who create this profit, namely the internal entrepreneurs.
Secure Network Coding against Wiretapping and Byzantine Attacks

In wireless networks, an attacker can tune a receiver and tap the communication between two nodes. Whether or not some meaningful information is obtained by tapping a wireless connection depends on the transmission scheme. In this paper, we design some secure network coding by combining information-theoretic approaches with cryptographic approaches. It ensures that the wiretapper cannot get any meaningful information no matter how many channels are wiretapped. In addition, if each source packet is augmented with a hash symbol which is computed from a simple nonlinear polynomial function of the data symbols, then the probability of detecting the modification is very high.
Tuberculosis Transmission among Immigrants and Autochthonous Populations of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia

Background Eastern province of Saudi Arabia is an industrial zone with large immigrant population and high level of tuberculosis case notification among immigrants. The impact of immigration and current trends of tuberculosis transmission among immigrants and autochthonous population in the region had not been investigated so far using molecular tools. Methodology During 2009- 2011, a total of 524 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates were collected from the central tuberculosis reference laboratory, representing an estimated 79.2% of the culture-positive tuberculosis cases over the study period in the province. These isolates were genotyped by using 24 locus-based MIRU-VNTR typing and spoligotyping followed by first line drug susceptibility testing. The molecular clustering profiles and phylogenetic diversity of isolates were determined and compared to the geographical origins of the patients. Principle Findings Genotyping showed an overall predominance of Delhi/CAS (29.4%), EAI (23.8%) and Ghana (13.3%) lineages, with slightly higher proportions of Delhi/CAS among autochthonous population (33.3 %) and EAI (30.9%) among immigrants. Rate of any drug resistance was 20.2% with 2.5% of multi-drug resistance. Strain cluster analysis indicated 42 clusters comprising 210 isolates, resulting in a calculated recent transmission index of 32.1%. Overall shared cluster ratio was 78.6% while 75.8% were shared between autochthonous population and immigrant population with a predominance of immigrants from South east Asia (40.7%). In contrast, cross national transmission within the immigrant population was limited (24.2%). Younger age (15-30- p value-0.043, 16-45, p value 0.030), Saudi nationality (p value-0.004) and South East Asian origin (p value-0.011) were identified as significant predisposing factors for molecular strain clustering. Conclusions The high proportion of molecular clusters shared among the autochthonous and immigrant populations suggests a high permeability of tuberculosis transmission between both populations in the province. These results prompt for the need to strengthen the current tuberculosis control strategies and surveillance programs.
A hybrid important points identification for time series: Financial case

Important points identification is the key of the piecewise linear segmentation for time series. However, nearly all existing approaches are always perceptually important points (PIPs) focused while neglecting the domain related important points (DIPs) which might be of great interests to the domain experts. In order to preserve more important information relating to the particular domain after segmentation, a hybrid method to identify important points from both perceptual and domain perspectives is presented. We show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method via a financial case.
Caregivers' Barriers to Disclosing the HIV Diagnosis to Infected Children on Antiretroviral Therapy in a Resource-Limited District in South Africa: A Grounded Theory Study

We used a grounded theory approach to explore how a sample of caregivers of children on antiretroviral treatment (ART) experience HIV disclosure to their infected children. This paper explores caregivers' barriers to disclosing HIV to infected children. Caregivers of children aged 6–13 years who were receiving ART participated in four focus-group interviews. Three main themes, caregiver readiness to tell, right time to tell, and the context of disclosure, emerged. Disclosure was delayed because caregivers had to first deal with personal fears which influenced their readiness to disclose; disclosure was also delayed because caregivers did not know how to tell. Caregivers lacked disclosure skills because they had not been trained on how to tell their children about their diagnosis, on how to talk to their children about HIV, and on how to deal with a child who reacts negatively to the disclosure. Caregivers feared that the child might tell others about the diagnosis and would be discriminated and socially rejected and that children would live in fear of death and dying. Health care providers have a critical role to play in HIV disclosure to infected children, considering the caregivers' expressed desire to be trained and prepared for the disclosure.
Coordinating Work in Hospitals through a Global Tool: Implications for the implementation of electronic patient records in hospitals

Modem organisations increasingly have to face the challenge of increased complexity and specialisation. The specialisation of work requires professionals, people possessing specialised skills and often having a high level of education. Organisations that face this kind of problem are large hospitals. The implementation of Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) in these hospitals is accordingly expected to reduce complexity and curb specialisation by coordinating work among contexts and different types of users. The paper is based on a hospital department with several different professionals working together. The professionals successfully organise their work and the production of their reports according to a global classification system. This makes the case an illustrative example on how hospitals might take a starting point in EPRs through such a mechanism and may provide some strategies for the implementation of EPRs.
Elasticity mapping of murine abdominal organs in vivo using harmonic motion imaging (HMI)

Recently, ultrasonic imaging of soft tissue mechanics has been increasingly studied to image otherwise undetectable pathologies. However, many underlying mechanisms of tissue stiffening remain unknown, requiring small animal studies and adapted elasticity mapping techniques. Harmonic motion imaging (HMI) assesses tissue viscoelasticity by inducing localized oscillation from a periodic acoustic radiation force. The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of HMI for in vivo elasticity mapping of abdominal organs in small animals. Pathological cases, i.e. chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, were also studied in vivo to assess the capability of HMI for detection of the change in mechanical properties. A 4.5 MHz focused ultrasound transducer (FUS) generated an amplitude-modulated beam resulting in 50 Hz harmonic tissue oscillations at its focus. Axial tissue displacement was estimated using 1D-cross-correlation of RF signals acquired with a 7.8 MHz diagnostic transducer confocally aligned with the FUS. In vitro results in canine liver and kidney showed the correlation between HMI displacement and Young’s moduli measured by rheometry compression testing. HMI was capable of providing reproducible elasticity maps of the mouse abdominal region in vivo allowing the identification of, from stiffest to softest, the murine kidney, pancreas, liver, and spleen. Finally, pancreata affected by pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer showed HMI displacements 1.7 and 2.2 times lower than in the control case, respectively, indicating higher stiffness. The HMI displacement amplitude was correlated with the extent of fibrosis as well as detecting the very onset of stiffening even before fibrosis could be detected on H&E. This work shows that HMI can produce reliable elasticity maps of mouse abdominal region in vivo, thus providing a potentially critical tool to assess pathologies affecting organ elasticity.
Unusual Condition Mining for Risk Management of Hydroelectric Power Plants

Kyushu Electric Power Co.,Inc. collects different sensor data and weather information to maintain the safety of hydroelectric power plants while the plants are running. In this paper, we consider that the abnormal condition sign may be unusual condition. This paper shows results of unusual condition patterns of bearing vibration detected from the collected different sensor data and weather information by using one class support vector machine. The result shows that our approach may be useful for unusual condition patterns detection in bearing vibration and maintaining hydroelectric power plants
Hierarchical Modeling of Juvenile Chinook Salmon Survival as a Function of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Water Exports

Abstract A multiyear study was carried out in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta system to examine the relationship between the survival of out-migrating Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha and the amount of water exported from the system by the two major pumping stations in the southern portion of the delta. Paired releases of groups of coded-wire-tagged juvenile late-fall-run Chinook salmon were made at two locations in the delta, one in the main-stem Sacramento River and one in the interior portion of the delta where they were more likely to be directly affected by the pumping stations. Shortly after release, the fish were recovered downstream by a midwater trawl, and over a 2–4-year period the fish were recovered in ocean fishery catches and spawning ground surveys. A Bayesian hierarchical model for the recoveries was fit that explicitly accounted for the between-release variation in survival and capture probabilities as well as the sampling variation in the recoveries. The survival of the interior .
Adaptive modeling of user's preferences in multiagent meeting scheduling problem using analytical hierarchy process

Reaching to an agreement in meeting arrangements has always been a hard and cumbersome task, especially when there are many participants. An efficient approach to this problem is multi-agent systems. When we are designing a multi-agent system where agents are making decisions behalf of users we face another problem. How agents can model users' preferences? In this paper we are trying to cope with this problem. As we know analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique is famous for its ability to determining preferences. In this paper an adaptive modeling technique based on AHP has been proposed.
Hybrid Framework for Robust Multimodal Face Recognition

Both two dimensional principal component analysis and fisher linear discriminant analysis are successful face recognition algorithms. Recognition rate, time complexity can be improved by combining the two algorithms with the very powerful tool discrete wavelet transform. Experiments on the ORL face database show that the proposed method outperforms PCA, LDA, DWT+LDA algorithms in terms of recognition rate and classification speed. The proposed method is very powerful and useful in solving face recognition problems.
Conversion between Mini‐Mental State Examination, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and Dementia Rating Scale‐2 scores in Parkinson's disease

Cognitive impairment is one of the earliest, most common, and most disabling non‐motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). Thus, routine screening of global cognitive abilities is important for the optimal management of PD patients. Few global cognitive screening instruments have been developed for or validated in PD patients. The Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and Dementia Rating Scale‐2 (DRS‐2) have been used extensively for cognitive screening in both clinical and research settings. Determining how to convert the scores between instruments would facilitate the longitudinal assessment of cognition in clinical settings and the comparison and synthesis of cognitive data in multicenter and longitudinal cohort studies. The primary aim of this study was to apply a simple and reliable algorithm for the conversion of MoCA to MMSE scores in PD patients. A secondary aim was to apply this algorithm for the conversion of DRS‐2 to both MMSE and MoCA scores. The cognitive performance of a convenience sample of 360 patients with idiopathic PD was assessed by at least two of these cognitive screening instruments. We then developed conversion scores between the MMSE, MoCA, and DRS‐2 using equipercentile equating and log‐linear smoothing. The conversion score tables reported here enable direct and easy comparison of three routinely used cognitive screening assessments in PD patients. © 2014 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Design of a High Speed SHA-1 Architecture Using Unfolded Pipeline for Biomedical Applications

ash functions are a special family of cryptographic algorithms, which are applied widely wherever message integrity and authentication issues are critical. It is used in many security protocol like that TLS, SSL, PGP, SSH and IPSec. In this paper, we propose a high performance Hash coding architecture that computes next round coefficient in the present round in parallel. We optimize the critical path and hence the clock frequency by reorganizing of computation ordering of the functional blocks. In addition, we employ a pipeline architecture that computes Hash code for 512 bits block data in each clock hence high throughputs becomes possible. The proposed architecture provides more than 10% performance improvement as well as a 20% reduction in hardware size when compared with the previous implementations [2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12].
A New Digital Signature Algorithm Similar to ELGamal Type

Application of digital signature technology becomes more extensive, but many exposed digital signature algorithms have increasingly revealed some shortcomings and deficiencies. Aiming directly at the frequently used digital signature technologies, which are weak to Substitution Attack and Homeostasis Attack, the authors perform the hash transformation on messages before signature. Then, a hash round function is constructed, which simultaneously satisfies the characters of balance, high nonlinearity, strict avalanche criterion and realization of software. Moreover, making use of the hash round function, a new hash algorithm named HRFA (Hash Round Function Algorithm) is contrived. On this basis, aiming at the defect that the existing digital signature algorithms are weak to active attack and impersonation attack, using the hash algorithm named HRFA and the self-certified public key system, a new kind of digital signature algorithm, which is similar to ELGamal, named H-S DSA (Hash Round Function and Self-certified Public Key System Digital Signature Algorithm) is raised and realized. Finally, the authors analyze the H-S DSA from two aspects of security and time-complexity. And, the results show that the new designed digital signature algorithm named H-S DSA not only has better security strength, but also has lower time- complexity.