Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Efficient Parallel Trust-Based Recommendation Method on Multicores

With the significant advances in online social networks which provide precious knowledge for personalized recommendation, it is necessary to design effective and efficient method to deal with such data. In this paper, we focus on the recommendation system to integrate the preference information and trust relations among users, following the trust-based recommendation model (TbRM) [1] which considers both the user's reputation and his/her nearest neighbors in the social network. Our main contribution is to present a fast algorithm to solve TbRM model with the aid of graph vertex programming (GVP) in parallel. The idea is to represent the preference and trust information as a graph with both user and item vertices, and its edges contain the preference and trust information. In this case, the recommendation problem becomes a graph analysis procedure which iteratively updates the vertices' states in parallel with the aid of predefined vertex state function and edge information. A series of experiments on four real-world recommendation datasets (Ciao, Epinions, Douban and Flixster) have shown that the graph parallel operations obviously speed up the recommendation procedure, e.g., GVP performs 1.1–2.3× faster than the existing popular distributed stochastic gradient descent algorithm with different number of cores.
Investigating the Impact of Project Team Composition in Enterprise System Implementation: an Exploratory Study

The goal of this paper is to investigate the issues connected with project team composition in enterprise system (ES) implementation. This exploratory study builds on research conducted among a few dozen enterprises introducing ES into their organisations. The paper analyses how the inquired companies organised an implementation team and a steering committee. The investigated issues include the project team composition with reference to ES scope introduced, the presence of a system provider’s representative, project manager’s organisational position, and the composition of a steering committee. Furthermore, the paper examines if the projects were headed by an IT/IS person and to what extent they were supported by top management. Using the ES implementation success measure and statistical analysis’ techniques, the study seeks to discover the impact of project team related issues on implementation success. The findings suggest that ES implementation should be a business-lead initiative as contrasted to an IT-driven project. Finally, on the basis of the research, recommendations regarding the implementation team composition were formulated.
Reinforcement Learning for Semantic Segmentation in Indoor Scenes

Future advancements in robot autonomy and sophistication of robotics tasks rest on robust, efficient, and task-dependent semantic understanding of the environment. Semantic segmentation is the problem of simultaneous segmentation and categorization of a partition of sensory data. The majority of current approaches tackle this using multi-class segmentation and labeling in a Conditional Random Field (CRF) framework or by generating multiple object hypotheses and combining them sequentially. In practical settings, the subset of semantic labels that are needed depend on the task and particular scene and labelling every single pixel is not always necessary. We pursue these observations in developing a more modular and flexible approach to multi-class parsing of RGBD data based on learning strategies for combining independent binary object-vs-background segmentations in place of the usual monolithic multi-label CRF approach. Parameters for the independent binary segmentation models can be learned very efficiently, and the combination strategy---learned using reinforcement learning---can be set independently and can vary over different tasks and environments. Accuracy is comparable to state-of-art methods on a subset of the NYU-V2 dataset of indoor scenes, while providing additional flexibility and modularity.
Novel search space updating heuristics-based genetic algorithm for optimizing medium-scale airline crew pairing problems

This study examines the crew pairing problem, which is one of the most comprehensive problems encountered in airline planning, to generate a set of crew pairings that has minimal cost, covers all flight legs and fulfils legal criteria. In addition, this study examines current research related to crew pairing optimization. The contribution of this study is developing heuristics based on an improved dynamic-based genetic algorithm, a deadhead-minimizing pairing search and a partial solution approach (less-costly alternative pairing search). This study proposes genetic algorithm variants and a memetic algorithm approach. In addition, computational results based on real-world data from a local airline company in Turkey are presented. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach can successfully handle medium sets of crew pairings and generate higher-quality solutions than previous methods.
Risk of virus and non‐virus related malignancies following immunosuppression in a cohort of liver transplant recipients. Italy, 1985–2014

This cohort study assessed, in Italy, the overall pattern of risk of de novo malignancies following liver transplantation (LT). The study group included 2,832 individuals who underwent LT between 1985 and 2014 in nine centers all over Italy. Person–years (PYs) at cancer risk were computed from 30 days after LT to the date of cancer diagnosis, to the date of death or to the end of follow‐up. Excess cancer risk, as compared to the general population, was estimated using standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). During 18,642 PYs, 246 LT recipients developed 266 de novo malignancies, corresponding to a 1.8‐fold higher cancer risk (95% CI: 1.6–2.0). SIRs were particularly elevated for virus‐related malignancies, including Kaposi's sarcoma (SIR = 53.6, 95% CI: 30.0–88.5), non‐Hodgkin lymphomas (SIR = 7.1, 95% CI: 4.8–10.1) and cervix uteri (SIR = 5.4, 95% CI: 1.1–15.8). Among virus‐unrelated malignancies, elevated risks emerged for head and neck (SIR = 4.4, 95% CI: 3.1–6.2), esophagus (SIR = 6.7, 95% CI: 2.9–13.3) and adrenal gland (SIR = 22.9, 95% CI: 2.8–82.7). Borderline statistically significant elevated risks were found for lung cancer (SIR = 1.4, 95% CI: 1.0–2.1) and skin melanoma (SIR = 2.6, 95% CI: 1.0–5.3). A reduced risk emerged for prostate cancer (SIR = 0.1, 95% CI: 0.0–0.5). These findings underline the need of preventive interventions and early detection of malignancies, specifically tailored to LT recipients.
2 SEISMIC HAZARD ASSESSMENT 2 . 1 Probabilistic vs . determinist approach

Buried steel pipelines transporting oil and oil products play a vital role in the energy supply chain. Pipelines extend to long distances and thus intercepting tectonic faults, when a seismic area is crossed, is often inevitable and may heavily threat the pipeline integrity. Earthquakes and the associated fault displacements are naturally random events and therefore the imposed large ground displacements on the pipeline have to be considered through a probabilistic perspective. In the present study, a comprehensive seismic risk analysis of buried pipeline – fault crossing is presented, consisting of two steps. The first step is the probabilistic assessment of the fault displacement accounting also for the pertinent uncertainties. The second step is the pipeline structural analysis. The transition from the seismological data to the structural analysis is realized through the fault displacement components as the selected vector intensity measure. The outcome of the proposed methodology is the strain hazard curves for both tensile and compressive longitudinal strains. The resulting strain capacities are compared to strain demands from structural codes in order to assess the potential of pipeline failure due to local buckling or tensile fracture. Furthermore, uncertainty and disaggregation results from the fault displacement hazard analysis are presented for the selection of the appropriate deterministic design scenario and the evaluation of the fault displacement hazard parameters. Lastly, the proposed process is a reliable estimation tool for seismic risk assessment of pipeline – fault crossing and a decision making tool for route selection and application of preventive measures against the consequences of faulting on pipelines. Vasileios E. Melissianos, Dimitrios Vamvatsikos and Charis J. Gantes
Comparative Cardiac Toxicity of Anthracyclines In Vitro and In Vivo in the Mouse

Purpose The antineoplastic efficacy of anthracyclines is limited by their cardiac toxicity. In this study, we evaluated the toxicity of doxorubicin, non-pegylated liposomal-delivered doxorubicin, and epirubicin in HL-1 adult cardiomyocytes in culture as well as in the mouse in vivo. Methods The cardiomyocytes were incubated with the three anthracyclines (1 µM) to assess reactive oxygen generation, DNA damage and apoptotic cell death. CF-1 mice (10/group) received doxorubicin, epirubicin or non-pegylated liposomal-doxorubicin (10 mg/kg) and cardiac function was monitored by Doppler echocardiography to measure left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), heart rate (HR) and cardiac output (CO) both prior to and 10 days after drug treatment. Results In HL-1 cells, non-pegylated liposomal-doxorubicin generated significantly less reactive oxygen species (ROS), as well as less DNA damage and apoptosis activation when compared with doxorubicin and epirubicin. Cultured breast tumor cells showed similar sensitivity to the three anthracyclines. In the healthy mouse, non-pegylated liposomal doxorubicin showed a minimal and non-significant decrease in LVEF with no change in HR or CO, compared to doxorubicin and epirubicin. Conclusion This study provides evidence for reduced cardiac toxicity of non-pegylated-liposomal doxorubicin characterized by attenuation of ROS generation, DNA damage and apoptosis in comparison to epirubicin and doxorubicin.
Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing

Integrating computer vision and natural language processing is a novel interdisciplinary field that has received a lot of attention recently. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive introduction of the integration of computer vision and natural language processing in multimedia and robotics applications with more than 200 key references. The tasks that we survey include visual attributes, image captioning, video captioning, visual question answering, visual retrieval, human-robot interaction, robotic actions, and robot navigation. We also emphasize strategies to integrate computer vision and natural language processing models as a unified theme of distributional semantics. We make an analog of distributional semantics in computer vision and natural language processing as image embedding and word embedding, respectively. We also present a unified view for the field and propose possible future directions.
Resource management mechanism for SLA provisioning on cloud computing for IoT

One of the challenges in cloud computing is how to dynamically allocate resources such that QoS (Quality of Service) constraints are satisfied and provider's profit is maximized. In order to maximize the profit, the penalty cost for SLA (Service Level Agreement) violations needs to be reduced. We propose a winner determination mechanism in combinatorial auction system to efficiently allocate resources and reduce the penalty cost with consideration for execution time constraint. To evaluate the effectiveness of our mechanism, we show the performance evaluation with real workload data.
The ICDAR 2011 Music Scores Competition: Staff Removal and Writer Identification

In the last years, there has been a growing interest in the analysis of handwritten music scores. In this sense, our goal has been to foster the interest in the analysis of handwritten music scores by the proposal of two different competitions: Staff removal and Writer Identification. Both competitions have been tested on the CVC-MUSCIMA database: a ground-truth of handwritten music score images. This paper describes the competition details, including the dataset and ground-truth, the evaluation metrics, and a short description of the participants, their methods, and the obtained results.
Frailty syndrome: an overview

Frailty is a common and important geriatric syndrome characterized by age-associated declines in physiologic reserve and function across multiorgan systems, leading to increased vulnerability for adverse health outcomes. Two major frailty models have been described in the literature. The frailty phenotype defines frailty as a distinct clinical syndrome meeting three or more of five phenotypic criteria: weakness, slowness, low level of physical activity, self-reported exhaustion, and unintentional weight loss. The frailty index defines frailty as cumulative deficits identified in a comprehensive geriatric assessment. Significant progress has recently been made in understanding the pathogenesis of frailty. Chronic inflammation is likely a key pathophysiologic process that contributes to the frailty syndrome directly and indirectly through other intermediate physiologic systems, such as the musculoskeletal, endocrine, and hematologic systems. The complex multifactorial etiologies of frailty also include obesity and specific diseases. Major clinical applications include risk assessment and stratification. This can be applied to the elderly population in the community and in a variety of care settings. Frailty may also be useful for risk assessment in surgical patients and those with cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or human immunodeficiency virus infection, as well as for assessment of vaccine effectiveness in older adults. Currently, exercise and comprehensive geriatric interdisciplinary assessment and treatment are key interventions for frailty. As understanding of the biologic basis and complexity of frailty further improves, more effective and targeted interventional strategies and innovative geriatric-care models will likely be developed.
Performing politics on social media: The dramaturgy of an environmental controversy on Facebook

ABSTRACT Social media has become an important stage for environmental politics where different actors seek to shape and contest meanings. Meaning making on social media is studied through an empirical study of a controversial coal seam gas project in Australia. Key Facebook pages associated with opposing viewpoints on this controversy are analyzed using the dramaturgical concepts of scripting and staging. The analysis reveals that the Facebook performances are multisensory, staged to appear personal, and tightly scripted. It is argued that although these characteristics serve an important solidarity function among like-minded individuals and groups, they leave limited space or tolerance for counter-scripts. This in-depth empirical analysis suggests that social media platforms are transforming the way publics form and meet, but their capacity to bridge opposing viewpoints on divisive issues remains limited.
Atomic-scale investigation of e and h precipitates in bainite in 100 Cr 6 bearing steel by atom probe tomography and ab initio calculations

Carbide precipitation during upper and lower bainite formation in high-carbon bearing steel 100Cr6 is characterized using transmission electron microscopy and atom probe tomography. The results reveal that both e and h carbides precipitate in lower bainite isothermally held at 260 C and only h precipitates form in upper bainite isothermally held at 500 C. e and h precipitate under paraequilibrium condition at 260 C in lower bainite and h precipitates under negligible partitioning local equilibrium condition in upper bainite at 500 C. In order to theoretically study e and h precipitation and the e! h transition in bainite, thermodynamic calculations have been carried out using ab initio techniques. We find that e and h carbides in ferrite have almost identical thermodynamic stability, and hence have similar formation probability. In austenite, however, cementite formation is clearly preferred: it is favored by 5 kJ mol 1 at room temperature and still by 4 kJ mol 1 at 500 C. Hence, the thermodynamic predictions agree well with the atom probe tomography results. 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Naïve Dialecticism and Indecisiveness

Previous research suggests that individuals of East Asian (vs. European) cultural backgrounds are more indecisive, and this cultural difference is related to naïve dialecticism, a lay belief system that tolerates contradictory information. The present research extends this line of work by examining a proximal mediating mechanism underlying the relationship between naïve dialecticism and indecisiveness as well as a negative consequence of chronic indecisiveness induced by naïve dialecticism. Results indicated that East Asian (vs. European) Canadian participants were more indecisive in a real educational decision (Study 1) and exhibited lower life satisfaction, which was mediated serially by naïve dialecticism through chronic indecisiveness (Study 2). In Study 3, European Canadian participants who were primed with a dialectical mind-set were more indecisive in a consumer choice task, relative to those not primed, and this effect was mediated by evaluative ambivalence toward the chosen alternative.
Validation of tractography: Comparison with manganese tracing

In this study, we used invasive tracing to evaluate white matter tractography methods based on ex vivo diffusion‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dwMRI) data. A representative selection of tractography methods were compared to manganese tracing on a voxel‐wise basis, and a more qualitative assessment examined whether, and to what extent, certain fiber tracts and gray matter targets were reached. While the voxel‐wise agreement was very limited, qualitative assessment revealed that tractography is capable of finding the major fiber tracts, although there were some differences between the methods. However, false positive connections were very common and, in particular, we discovered that it is not possible to achieve high sensitivity (i.e., few false negatives) and high specificity (i.e., few false positives) at the same time. Closer inspection of the results led to the conclusion that these problems mainly originate from regions with complex fiber arrangements or high curvature and are not easily resolved by sophisticated local models alone. Instead, the crucial challenge in making tractography a truly useful and reliable tool in brain research and neurology lies in the acquisition of better data. In particular, the increase of spatial resolution, under preservation of the signal‐to‐noise‐ratio, is key. Hum Brain Mapp 36:4116–4134, 2015. © 2015 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Biosilicate®–gelatine bone scaffolds by the foam replica technique: development and characterization

Abstract The development of bioactive glass-ceramic materials has been a topic of great interest aiming at enhancing the mechanical strength of traditional bioactive scaffolds. In the present study, we test and demonstrate the use of Biosilicate® glass-ceramic powder to fabricate bone scaffolds by the foam replica method. Scaffolds possessing the main requirements for use in bone tissue engineering (95% porosity, 200–500 μm pore size) were successfully produced. Gelatine coating was investigated as a simple approach to increase the mechanical competence of the scaffolds. The gelatine coating did not affect the interconnectivity of the pores and did not significantly affect the bioactivity of the Biosilicate® scaffold. The gelatine coating significantly improved the compressive strength (i.e. 0.80 ± 0.05 MPa of coated versus 0.06 ± 0.01 MPa of uncoated scaffolds) of the Biosilicate® scaffold. The combination of Biosilicate® glass-ceramic and gelatine is attractive for producing novel scaffolds for bone tissue engineering.
Propagation of content similarity through a collaborative network for live show recommendation

We present a network-based recommender system for live shows (concerts, theater, circus, etc) that finds a set of people probably interested in a given, new show. We combine collaborative and content-based filtering to take benefit of past activity of users and of the features of the new show. Indeed, as this show is new we cannot rely on collaborative filtering only. To solve this cold-start problem, we perform network alignment and insert the new show in a way consistent with collaborative filtering. We refine the obtained similarities using spreading in the network. We illustrate the performances of our system on a large scale real-world dataset.
Rate and significance of hypomanic switches in unipolar melancholic depression

Summary One hundred and sixteen patients with RDC unipolar recurrent depressive disorder, melancholic subtype, were treated with imipramine or phenelzine and followed-up for six months. None of the patients had a first-degree relative with bipolar I disorder. Twenty-six patients (22.4%) presented an hypomanic episode (‘hypomanic group’). This group of patients, when depressed, had a significantly lower age of onset of the disorder and higher response to antidepressant therapy than patients who did not present an hypomanic episode. Significantly more patients (88%) of the ‘hypomanic group’ had at least one first-degree relative with a history of major depressive disorder. These patients displayed some of the typical features of bipolar II disorder. Overall results support the continuum in clinical phenomena between unipolar and bipolar disorders.
Reference Quality Genome Assemblies of Three Parastagonospora nodorum Isolates Differing in Virulence on Wheat

Parastagonospora nodorum, the causal agent of Septoria nodorum blotch in wheat, has emerged as a model necrotrophic fungal organism for the study of host–microbe interactions. To date, three necrotrophic effectors have been identified and characterized from this pathogen, including SnToxA, SnTox1, and SnTox3. Necrotrophic effector identification was greatly aided by the development of a draft genome of Australian isolate SN15 via Sanger sequencing, yet it remained largely fragmented. This research presents the development of nearly finished genomes of P. nodorum isolates Sn4, Sn2000, and Sn79-1087 using long-read sequencing technology. RNAseq analysis of isolate Sn4, consisting of eight time points covering various developmental and infection stages, mediated the annotation of 13,379 genes. Analysis of these genomes revealed large-scale polymorphism between the three isolates, including the complete absence of contig 23 from isolate Sn79-1087, and a region of genome expansion on contig 10 in isolates Sn4 and Sn2000. Additionally, these genomes exhibit the hallmark characteristics of a “two-speed” genome, being partitioned into two distinct GC-equilibrated and AT-rich compartments. Interestingly, isolate Sn79-1087 contains a lower proportion of AT-rich segments, indicating a potential lack of evolutionary hotspots. These newly sequenced genomes, consisting of telomere-to-telomere assemblies of nearly all 23 P. nodorum chromosomes, provide a robust foundation for the further examination of effector biology and genome evolution.