Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Communication-Efficient Distributed Learning of Discrete Distributions

We initiate a systematic investigation of distribution learning (density estimation) when the data is distributed across multiple servers. The servers must communicate with a referee and the goal is to estimate the underlying distribution with as few bits of communication as possible. We focus on non-parametric density estimation of discrete distributions with respect to the l1 and l2 norms. We provide the first non-trivial upper and lower bounds on the communication complexity of this basic estimation task in various settings of interest. Specifically, our results include the following: 1. When the unknown discrete distribution is unstructured and each server has only one sample, we show that any blackboard protocol (i.e., any protocol in which servers interact arbitrarily using public messages) that learns the distribution must essentially communicate the entire sample. 2. For the case of structured distributions, such as k-histograms and monotone distributions, we design distributed learning algorithms that achieve significantly better communication guarantees than the naive ones, and obtain tight upper and lower bounds in several regimes. Our distributed learning algorithms run in near-linear time and are robust to model misspecification. Our results provide insights on the interplay between structure and communication efficiency for a range of fundamental distribution estimation tasks.
Object extraction in urban environments from large-scale dynamic point cloud datasets

In this paper, we introduce a system framework which can automatically interpret large point cloud datasets collected from dense urban areas by moving aerial or terrestrial Lidar platforms. We propose novel algorithms for region segmentation, motion analysis, object identification and population level scene analysis which steps can highly contribute to organize the data into a semantically indexed structure, enabling quick responses for content based user queries about the environment. The system is tested on real Lidar data, and for demonstration quantitative evaluation is given on vehicle detection.
Supporting Rich And Dynamic Communication In Large-Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments

We focus on the problem of constructing collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) that scale to large numbers of simultaneous participants and yet which still afford rich and varied possibilities for communication. This is achieved by extending our previously defined spatial model of interaction for CVEs to include third-party objects that provide support for contextual factors in awareness calculations and that enhance scaleability. Third parties can have two effects on awareness: attenuation or amplification of existing awareness relationships, and the introduction of new aggregate awareness relationships. We propose a range of applications for third-party objects including world structuring regions, aggregate views, dynamic crowds of participants, common foci, representational and group services, and dynamic load management. We also discuss how the third-party concept relates to other approaches to structuring virtual environments such as tiles, zones, and locales. We then present an implementation, the MASSIVE-2 system, focusing on its network architecture which is based on a dynamic and selfconfiguring hierarchy of multicast groups. Finally, we describe four demonstration applications that have been developed in MASSIVE-2: an environment for staging a public poetry performance that includes semiprivate zones for social interaction; the Panoptican Plaza, which demonstrates a variety of differently bounded regions; a collaborative 3-D Web browser that groups pages into server regions; and the Arena, a performance space that supports both static and mobile crowd aggregations of groups of participants.
Fast intracellular motion in the living cell by video rate reflection confocal laser scanning microscopy

Fast intracellular motion (FIM) was first revealed by back scattered light (BSL) imaging in video rate confocal scanning laser microscopy (VRCSLM), beyond the limits of spatial and temporal resolution obtainable with conventional optical microscopy. BSL imaging enabled visualisation of intra and extracellular motion with resolution in space down to 0.2 μm and in time to 1/25th of a second. Mapping the cell space at 0.2 μm×0.2 μm (XY = in instantaneous best focal plane)×0.5 μm (Z = height/depth, optic axis direction) volume steps revealed a communication layer above the known contact layer and an integrated dynamic spatial network (IDSN) towards the cell centre. FIM was originally observed as localised quasichaotic dancing (dithering) or reflecting patches/spots in the cell centre, faster in the darker nuclear space. Later, a second type of FIM was recognised which differed by the presence of a varied proportion of centrifugal and centripetal directional movements and/or jumping of patches/spots in the cell centre and outside the nuclear space. The first type is characteristic for cells in slightly adverse conditions while the second type has so far only been found in eutrophic cells. Temporal speeding up and coarsening of FIM, followed by slowing and eventually cessation at cell death, was found on exposure to strong stressors. It was concluded that the state of FIM provides instantaneous information about individual cell reactions to actual treatment and about cell survival. A putative switch between the first and second type FIM could be considered as an indicator of timing of cellular processes. The significance of FIM for the biology of the cell is seen in the rapid assessment of the condition of an individual live cell investigated by combination of various methods. Requirements for further development of this approach are outlined.
Language chunking, data sparseness, and the value of a long marker list: explorations with word n-grams and authorial attribution

The frequencies of individual words have been the mainstay of computer-assisted authorial attribution over the past three decades. The usefulness of this sort of data is attested in many benchmark trials and in numerous studies of particular authorship problems. It is sometimes argued, however, that since language as spoken or written falls into word sequences, on the ‘idiom principle’, and since language is characteristically produced in the brain in chunks, not in individual words, n-grams with n higher than 1 are superior to individual words as a source of authorship markers. In this article, we test the usefulness of word n-grams for authorship attribution by asking how many good-quality authorship markers are yielded by n-grams of various types, namely 1-grams, 2-grams, 3-grams, 4-grams, and 5-grams. We use two ways of formulating the n-grams, two corpora of texts, and two methods for finding and assessing markers. We find that when using methods based on regularly occurring markers, and drawing on all the available vocabulary, 1-grams perform best. With methods based on rare markers, and all the available vocabulary, strict 3-gram sequences perform best. If we restrict ourselves to a defined word-list of function-words to form n-grams, 2-grams offer a striking improvement on 1-grams.
Node operation reduced decoding for LDPC codes

A novel scheme combining a stopping criterion and a node deactivation mechanism is proposed in this paper to reduce the number of node operations in LDPC decoding. The proposed stopping criterion employs an adaptive threshold to remove the channel-condition dependence of the conventional parity-check based stopping criterion. The proposed node deactivation mechanism improves the accuracy of node reliability estimation. As compared to standard BP decoding, the proposed scheme can save up to 80.06% node operations for IEEE 802.16e (2304, 1152) code. It can be implemented with only minor modifications of parity check step in standard LDPC decoders. This scheme can reduce the power consumption and decoding latency of LDPC decoder with low hardware overhead.
Using Avoidable Admissions to Measure Quality of Care for Cardiometabolic and other Physical Comorbidities of Psychiatric Disorders: A Population-Based, Record-Linkage Analysis

Objective: Quality of care for comorbid physical disorders in psychiatric patients can be assessed by the number of avoidable admissions for ambulatory care sensitive (ACS) conditions. These are admissions for physical conditions that, with appropriate primary care, should not require inpatient treatment. Avoidable admissions for ACS conditions feature prominently in Australia's National Health Performance Framework and have been used to assess health care provision for marginalized groups, such as Indigenous patients or those of lower socioeconomic status. They have not been applied to people with mental illness. Methods: A population-based, record-linkage analysis was used to measure ACS admissions for physical disorder in psychiatric patients of state-based facilities in Queensland, Australia, during 5 years. Results: There were 77 435 males (48.0%) and 83 783 females (52%) (total n = 161 218). Among these, 13 219 psychiatric patients (8.2%) had at least 1 ACS admission, the most common being for diabetes (n = 6086) and angina (n = 2620). Age-standardized rates were double those of the general population. Within the psychiatric group, and after adjusting for confounders, those who had ever been psychiatric inpatients experienced the highest rates of ACS admissions, especially for diabetes. Conclusions: In common with other marginalized groups, psychiatric patients have increased ACS admissions. Therefore, this measure could be used as an indicator of difficulties in access to appropriate primary care in Canada, given the availability of similar administrative data.
ECB Credibility and Transparency

This paper argues that ECB credibility in delivering price stability is being progressively eroded; this problem could be overcome by embracing greater transparency especially about the ECB's objectives, macroeconomic forecasts and decision-making. Â During the ECB's first decade, average inflation in the euro area has been low, but it has failed to meet the ECB's criterion of below but close to 2% over the medium term. Although this could be attributed to unanticipated shocks, the analysis in this paper points to some structural shortcomings. In particular, there has been an upward trend in medium and long term inflation expectations in the euro area, which have even reached over 2%, and the credibility of the ECB achieving price stability in the medium term has gradually eroded to critically low levels. In addition, there is evidence that medium and long term inflation expectations are negatively affected by the inflation experience of the euro area. However, this paper argues that these problems could be overcome embracing by greater transparency, especially about the ECB's objectives, macroeconomic forecasts and decision-making.
A health information recommender system: Enriching YouTube health videos with Medline Plus information by the use of SnomedCT terms

Web 2.0 is the web of collaborating and sharing, where all users have the chance to create, publish and share content. Thus there are two important effects. There is an overload of the information on the web and the trustworthiness of the sources is uncontrolled. In the health domain, access to harmful information could be controlled. To reach this goal we propose a Health Information Recommender System to connect videos with trustworthy information from very trustful medical sources, such as Medline Plus. According to video's data, this system detects the main topic of the video and enriches it with information from very well-known resources. Evaluation results reveal that the method using SNOMED CT terms to identify relative information is the most appropriate as the main method of the Health Information Recommender System.
Monitoring of CD59 expression in paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria treated with danazol

We describe a 52‐year‐old man with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) and a moderate transfusion requirement. Prior to and during sequential therapy with androgen (metenolone), glucocorticoid, and danazol, we evaluated CD59‐negative expression (PNH clone) in red blood cells, neutrophils, lymphocyte subsets, and bone marrow (BM) CD34+ cells. Although androgen and glucocorticoid were not effective for recovery of blood cell counts, the hemoglobin and platelet levels increased immediately after the therapy with danazol and the patient became transfusion independent. However, neither the serum level of LDH nor the percentage of PNH clone in each cell lineage, including BM CD34+ cells, decreased. The number of nucleated cells in BM increased drastically after the start of danazol. These findings suggest that the efficacy of danazol was not only due to the impediment of hemolysis but also due to stimulation of PNH clone proliferation in BM. Am. J. Hematol. 68:280‐‐283, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Calculations of factor VIII in vivo recovery and half-life.

In vivo recovery. Differences between laboratories depend on the time of sampling, factor VIII:C assay method, factor VIII:C plasma standard and the calculation of the patients' plasma volume. The results depend on whether the manufacturer's labelled potency or the factor VIII:C potency of the laboratory is used. In some countries the vials are labelled with a nominal potency ± 20 percent. Half-life. Most publications have shown that the factor VIII:C activity-time curve fits a two-compartment model. The elimination half-life is about 12 h. The initial half disappearance time or distribution half-life is used by some authors. However, very often the half-life has not been defined. The data collection period has been too short and the formula for the calculation has not been presented. The large intersubject variability may be due to the quality of the data collection and analysis. There are many pitfalls in deriving pharmacokinetic variables. Do we need a pharmacokinetic model, and, if so, which one?
Single room versus open-bay design in neonatal intensive care units for improvement in infant outcomes: a systematic review protocol.

REVIEW QUESTION/OBJECTIVE The objective of this review is to identify the impact of single room neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) design on infant outcomes compared to alternative design.The specific question is: what is the impact of single room design on outcomes of infants cared for in intensive care units compared to those in alternative designs?
Occurrence of sep Insecticidal Toxin Complex Genes in Serratia spp. and Yersinia frederiksenii

ABSTRACT Some strains of Serratia entomophila and S. proteamaculans cause amber disease of the grass grub Costelytra zealandica (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae). Three genes required for virulence, sepABC, are located on a large plasmid, pADAP. Sequence analysis suggests that the sepABC gene cluster may be part of a horizontally mobile region. This study presents evidence for the putative mobility of the sep genes of pADAP. Southern blot analysis showed that orthologues of the sep genes reside on plasmids within S. entomophila, S. liquefaciens, S. proteamaculans, and a plasmid from Yersinia frederiksenii. Three plasmids hybridized to the pADAP sep virulence-associated region but not the pADAP replication and conjugation regions. Subsequent DNA sequence analysis of the Y. frederiksenii sep-like genes, designated tcYF1 and tcYF2, showed that they had 88% and 87% DNA identity to sepA and sepB, respectively. These results indicate that the sep genes are part of a discrete horizontally mobile region.
Scrutable adaptive in community-enabled web portals

This book presents a framework for scrutable adaptivity in community-enabled web portals. The framework provides four models that an adaptive system needs for personalization: (1) a user model representing information about individual users, (2) a metadata repository providing annotations of content, (3) domain model defining machine-processable semantics of the domain knowledge used for modeling user features and annotating content, and (4) personalization rules defining the logic of adaptation. Also, the framework provides methods for keeping these models up-to-date, complete, and accurate. Among others, these methods leverage the technology for Natural Language Processing and the willingness of the user community to contribute and annotate content. Furthermore, the framework provides graphical user interfaces and interaction patters for allowing users to view and adapt these models.
Regulation of Notch1 Signaling by Nrf2: Implications for Tissue Regeneration

The cell survival pathway mediated by the transcription factor Nrf2 facilitates tissue regeneration by promoting Notch1 signaling. Setting the Pace of Regeneration The ability of tissues to regenerate is critical for organismal survival, yet all of the mechanisms regulating this complex phenomenon are unknown. Nrf2 is a member of a family of transcription factors, and without the prosurvival signaling of Nrf2, mice are sensitive to oxidative and electrophilic stresses and exhibit delays in tissue regeneration. Wakabayashi et al. connect Nrf2 to the Notch signaling pathway, which is involved in determining cell proliferation and cell fate, by showing that Nrf2 transcriptionally stimulates expression of Notch1 to establish basal Notch1 signaling. The amount of Notch1 at the time of injury appears to set the pace of liver regeneration, and forced Notch signaling in hepatocytes restored liver regeneration in Nrf2-deficient mice. The Keap1-Nrf2-ARE signaling pathway elicits an adaptive response for cell survival after endogenous and exogenous stresses, such as inflammation and carcinogens, respectively. Keap1 inhibits the transcriptional activation activity of Nrf2 (p45 nuclear factor erythroid-derived 2–related factor 2) in unstressed cells by facilitating its degradation. Through transcriptional analyses in Keap1- or Nrf2-disrupted mice, we identified interactions between the Keap1-Nrf2-ARE and the Notch1 signaling pathways. We found that Nrf2 recognized a functional antioxidant response element (ARE) in the promoter of Notch1. Notch1 regulates processes such as proliferation and cell fate decisions. We report a functional role for this cross talk between the two pathways and show that disruption of Nrf2 impeded liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy and was rescued by reestablishment of Notch1 signaling.
EvaToon: A novel graph matching system for evaluating cartoon drawings

Imitation cartoon drawing is an important skill for cartoonists, requiring quantity of efforts on practising and guidance. In this paper, we propose EvaToon, an imitated drawing evaluate system, which automatically assigns judging scores and marks improper drawing regions. With our system, cartoonists can practise and get guidance by themselves. We have cooperated with several experts on developing such an evaluation system. Based on their guide, we present EvaToon in two stages comprising cartoon drawings analyzing and similarity evaluating. During analyzing, we first locate contour pixels with high curvature as interest points and then extract multi-scale features around interest points to hierarchically describe shape. During evaluating, we first match interest points between original and imitated drawing based on distance of features. After matching, we construct a regression tree to map high dimensional difference of matching features to scores and marks based on quantity of manually evaluated training examples. Finally, our system matches an input imitated drawing with the original one and predicts its scores automatically. We demonstrate the accuracy of our EvaToon system in matching and predicting and prove the capability of describing shape of our proposed features by experiments on a collected dataset of imitated drawings.
Biodiversity technologies: tools as change agents

A meeting on Biodiversity Technologies was held by the Biodiversity Institute, Oxford on the 27–28 of September 2012 at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. The symposium brought together 36 speakers from North America, Australia and across Europe, presenting the latest research on emerging technologies in biodiversity science and conservation. Here we present a perspective on the general trends emerging from the symposium.
Implementation and Operational Research: Use of Symptom Screening and Sputum Microscopy Testing for Active Tuberculosis Case Detection Among HIV-Infected Patients in Real-World Clinical Practice in Uganda

Background:The uptake of intensified active TB case-finding among HIV-infected patients using symptom screening is not well understood. We evaluated the rate and completeness of each interim step in the TB pulmonary “diagnostic cascade” to understand real-world barriers to active TB case detection. Methods:We conducted a cohort analysis of new, antiretroviral therapy–naive, HIV-infected patients who attended a large HIV clinic in Mbarara, Uganda (March 1, 2012—September 30, 2013). We used medical records to extract date of completion of each step in the diagnostic cascade: symptom screen, order, collection, processing, and result. Factors associated with lack of sputum order were evaluated using multivariate Poisson regression and chart review of 50 screen-positive patients. Results:Of 2613 patients, 2439 (93%) were screened for TB and 682 (28%) screened positive. Only 90 (13.2%) had a sputum order. Of this group, 83% completed the diagnostic cascade, 13% were diagnosed with TB, and 50% had a sputum result within 1 day of their visit. Sputum ordering was associated with WHO stage 3 or 4 HIV disease and greater number of symptoms. The main identifiable reasons for lack of sputum order in chart review were treatment of presumed malaria (51%) or bacterial infection (43%). Conclusions:The majority of newly enrolled HIV-infected patients who screened positive for suspected TB did not have a sputum order, and those who did were more likely to have more symptoms and advanced HIV disease. Further evaluation of provider behavior in the management of screen-positive patients could improve active TB case detection rates.
Pathologic Thr175 tau phosphorylation in CTE and CTE with ALS

Objective To investigate whether chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and CTE with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (CTE-ALS) exhibit features previously observed in other tauopathies of pathologic phosphorylation of microtubule-associated protein tau at Thr175 (pThr175 tau) and Thr231 (pThr231 tau), and glycogen synthase kinase–3β (GSK3β) activation, and whether these pathologic features are a consequence of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods Tau isoform expression was assayed by western blot in 6 stage III CTE cases. We also used immunohistochemistry to analyze 5 cases each of CTE, CTE-ALS, and 5 controls for expression of activated GSK3β, pThr175 tau, pThr231 tau, and oligomerized tau within spinal cord tissue and hippocampus. Using a rat model of moderate TBI, we assessed tau pathology and phospho-GSK3β expression at 3 months postinjury. Results CTE and CTE-ALS are characterized by the presence of all 6 tau isoforms in both soluble and insoluble tau isolates. Activated GSK3β, pThr175 tau, pThr231 tau, and oligomerized tau protein expression was observed in hippocampal neurons and spinal motor neurons. We observed tau neuronal pathology (fibrillar inclusions and axonal damage) and increased levels of pThr175 tau and activated GSK3β in moderate TBI rats. Conclusions Pathologic phosphorylation of tau at Thr175 and Thr231 and activation of GSK3β are features of the tauopathy of CTE and CTE-ALS. These features can be replicated in an animal model of moderate TBI.