Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demand for online platforms for medical word-of-mouth

The choice of medical services affects an individual’s treatment and health. However, few studies have focused on medical electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), which has the greatest impact on such choices. This study was performed to explore the need for and general public’s attitude toward medical eWOM and provide a reference for government, media, and medical practitioners. In this study, 84% of the respondents had experience using online evaluation platforms to search for eWOM, and those who were satisfied with the online evaluation platforms substantially outnumbered those who were dissatisfied. The respondents generally believed that there is a need for physician evaluation platforms, although a difference remained between respondents who needed the online evaluation platforms (72.0%) and were willing to reference them (72.0%) and those who trusted them (46.5%) and were willing to provide their opinions (55.0%). These results could signify that despite the public’s need, the public remains doubtful of the information provided by these online evaluation platforms.
Robust Discovery of Positive and Negative Rules in Knowledge Bases

We present RUDIK, a system for the discovery of declarative rules over knowledge-bases (KBs). RUDIK discovers rules that express positive relationships between entities, such as "if two persons have the same parent, they are siblings", and negative rules, i.e., patterns that identify contradictions in the data, such as "if two persons are married, one cannot be the child of the other". While the former class infers new facts in the KB, the latter class is crucial for other tasks, such as detecting erroneous triples in data cleaning, or the creation of negative examples to bootstrap learning algorithms. The system is designed to: (i) enlarge the expressive power of the rule language to obtain complex rules and wide coverage of the facts in the KB, (ii) discover approximate rules (soft constraints) to be robust to errors and incompleteness in the KB, (iii) use disk-based algorithms, effectively enabling rule mining in commodity machines. In contrast with traditional ranking of all rules based on a measure of support, we propose an approach to identify the subset of useful rules to be exposed to the user. We model the mining process as an incremental graph exploration problem and prove that our search strategy has guarantees on the optimality of the results. We have conducted extensive experiments using real-world KBs to show that RUDIK outperforms previous proposals in terms of efficiency and that it discovers more effective rules for the application at hand.
An adaptive scheduling algorithm for heterogeneous Hadoop systems

The MapReduce framework and its open source implementation Hadoop have established themselves as one of the most polular large data sets analyzers. They are widely used by many cloud service providers such as Amazon EC2 Cloud. However, while latency-sensitive applications becoming more and more important, Hadoop system shows its shortcoming in ensuring jobs completed on time. And currently, user has to provide a metric to evaluate the performance of different clients. Motivated by this, we proposed an algorithm CP-Scheduler (CPS) which uses a optimizer to analyze the best schedule in order to minimize the number of delayed jobs. Otherwise, as Hadoop System is not good at heterogeneous computing, our algorithm can also adapt different remote machines. These two features make it having better efficiency than the scheduler in Hadoop. The proposed algorithm is initially evaluated by a simulator which is designed for Hadoop. Experimental results show that the number of missing deadline jobs decrease by 60 percent on average in different sizes of situations.
Adenosine Production by Biomaterial‐Supported Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Reduces the Innate Inflammatory Response in Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury

Background During myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury, there is extensive release of immunogenic metabolites that activate cells of the innate immune system. These include ATP and AMP, which upregulate chemotaxis, migration, and effector function of early infiltrating inflammatory cells. These cells subsequently drive further tissue devitalization. Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are a potential treatment modality for MI/R because of their powerful anti‐inflammatory capabilities; however, the manner in which they regulate the acute inflammatory milieu requires further elucidation. CD73, an ecto‐5′‐nucleotidase, may be critical in regulating inflammation by converting pro‐inflammatory AMP to anti‐inflammatory adenosine. We hypothesized that MSC‐mediated conversion of AMP into adenosine reduces inflammation in early MI/R, favoring a micro‐environment that attenuates excessive innate immune cell activation and facilitates earlier cardiac recovery. Methods and Results Adult rats were subjected to 30 minutes of MI/R injury. MSCs were encapsulated within a hydrogel vehicle and implanted onto the myocardium. A subset of MSCs were pretreated with the CD73 inhibitor, α,β‐methylene adenosine diphosphate, before implantation. Using liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry, we found that MSCs increase myocardial adenosine availability following injury via CD73 activity. MSCs also reduce innate immune cell infiltration as measured by flow cytometry, and hydrogen peroxide formation as measured by Amplex Red assay. These effects were dependent on MSC‐mediated CD73 activity. Finally, through echocardiography we found that CD73 activity on MSCs was critical to optimal protection of cardiac function following MI/R injury. Conclusions MSC‐mediated conversion of AMP to adenosine by CD73 exerts a powerful anti‐inflammatory effect critical for cardiac recovery following MI/R injury.
Improving the Efficiency of a Genre-Aware Approach to Focused Crawling Based on Link Context

Focused crawlers attempt to crawl web pages that are relevant to a specific topic or user interest. Although these kinds of crawlers have been proven to be effective, they need to improve their efficiency. Focused crawlers usually use a Frontier of non-visited URLs to visit the web pages and gather relavant ones. In this work, we define and evaluate a queueing policy of non-visited URLs, based on link context, to improve the efficiency of a genre-aware focused crawler. Our experimental evaluation shows, in some situations, an improvement around 100% in efficiency terms.
Attend in Groups: A Weakly-Supervised Deep Learning Framework for Learning from Web Data

Large-scale datasets have driven the rapid development of deep neural networks for visual recognition. However, annotating a massive dataset is expensive and time-consuming. Web images and their labels are, in comparison, much easier to obtain, but direct training on such automatially harvested images can lead to unsatisfactory performance, because the noisy labels of Web images adversely affect the learned recognition models. To address this drawback we propose an end-to-end weakly-supervised deep learning framework which is robust to the label noise in Web images. The proposed framework relies on two unified strategies &#x2013; random grouping and attention &#x2013; to effectively reduce the negative impact of noisy web image annotations. Specifically, random grouping stacks multiple images into a single training instance and thus increases the labeling accuracy at the instance level. Attention, on the other hand, suppresses the noisy signals from both incorrectly labeled images and less discriminative image regions. By conducting intensive experiments on two challenging datasets, including a newly collected fine-grained dataset with Web images of different car models, the superior performance of the proposed methods over competitive baselines is clearly demonstrated.
Killing the Myth of Cisco IOS Diversity: Recent Advances in Reliable Shellcode Design

IOS firmware diversity, the unintended consequence of a complex firmware compilation process, has historically made reliable exploitation of Cisco routers difficult. With approximately 300,000 unique IOS images in existence, a new class of version-agnostic shellcode is needed in order to make the large-scale exploitation of Cisco IOS possible. We show that such attacks are now feasible by demonstrating two different reliable shellcodes which will operate correctly over many Cisco hardware platforms and all known IOS versions. We propose a novel two-phase attack strategy against Cisco routers and the use of offline analysis of existing IOS images to defeat IOS firmware diversity. Furthermore, we discuss a new IOS rootkit which hijacks all interrupt service routines within the router and its ability to use intercept and modify process-switched packets just before they are scheduled for transmission. This ability allows the attacker to use the payload of innocuous packets, like ICMP, as a covert command and control channel. The same mechanism can be used to stealthily exfiltrate data out of the router, using response packets generated by the router itself as the vehicle. We present the implementation and quantitative reliability measurements by testing both shellcode algorithms against a large collection of IOS images. As our experimental results show, the techniques proposed in this paper can reliably inject command and control capabilities into arbitrary IOS images in a version-agnostic manner. We believe that the technique presented in this paper overcomes an important hurdle in the large-scale, reliable rootkit execution within Cisco IOS. Thus, effective host-based defense for such routers is imperative for maintaining the integrity of our global communication infrastructures.
Acetaminophen administration and the risk of acute kidney injury: a self-controlled case series study

Background Acetaminophen (APAP) is frequently used for analgesia and is considered safer than nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for the kidneys. However, there is little epidemiological evidence of the association between APAP and acute kidney injury (AKI). Objectives To examine the association between APAP and AKI using the self-controlled case series (SCCS) method, which is a novel strategy to control between-person confounders by comparing the risk and reference periods in each patient. Methods We performed SCCS in 1,871 patients (39.9% female) who were administered APAP and subsequently developed AKI, by reviewing electronically stored hospital information system data from May 2011 to July 2016. We used conditional Poisson regression to compare each patient’s risk and reference period. As a time-varying confounder, we adjusted the status of liver and kidney functions, systemic inflammation, and exposure to NSAIDs. Results We identified 5,650 AKI events during the 260,549 person-day observation period. The unadjusted incidences during the reference and exposure periods were 2.01/100 and 3.12/100 person-days, respectively. The incidence rate ratio adjusted with SCCS was 1.03 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.95–1.12). When we restricted endpoints as stage 2 AKI- and stage 3 AKI-level creatinine elevations, the incidence rate ratios were 1.20 (95% CI 0.91–1.58) and 1.20 (95% CI 0.62–2.31), respectively, neither of which was statistically significant. Conclusion Our findings added epidemiological information for the relationship between APAP administration and AKI development. The results indicated scarce association between APAP and AKI, presumably supporting the general physicians’ impression that APAP is safer for kidney.
Genetic Diversity and Distribution of the Ciguatera-Causing Dinoflagellate Gambierdiscus spp. (Dinophyceae) in Coastal Areas of Japan

Background The marine epiphytic dinoflagellate genus Gambierdiscus produce toxins that cause ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP): one of the most significant seafood-borne illnesses associated with fish consumption worldwide. So far, occurrences of CFP incidents in Japan have been mainly reported in subtropical areas. A previous phylogeographic study of Japanese Gambierdiscus revealed the existence of two distinct phylotypes: Gambierdiscus sp. type 1 from subtropical and Gambierdiscus sp. type 2 from temperate areas. However, details of the genetic diversity and distribution for Japanese Gambierdiscus are still unclear, because a comprehensive investigation has not been conducted yet. Methods/Principal Finding A total of 248 strains were examined from samples mainly collected from western and southern coastal areas of Japan during 2006–2011. The SSU rDNA, the LSU rDNA D8–D10 and the ITS region were selected as genetic markers and phylogenetic analyses were conducted. The genetic diversity of Japanese Gambierdiscus was high since five species/phylotypes were detected: including two reported phylotypes (Gambierdiscus sp. type 1 and Gambierdiscus sp. type 2), two species of Gambierdiscus (G. australes and G. cf. yasumotoi) and a hitherto unreported phylotype Gambierdiscus sp. type 3. The distributions of type 3 and G. cf. yasumotoi were restricted to the temperate and the subtropical area, respectively. On the other hand, type 1, type 2 and G. australes occurred from the subtropical to the temperate area, with a tendency that type 1 and G. australes were dominant in the subtropical area, whereas type 2 was dominant in the temperate area. By using mouse bioassay, type 1, type 3 and G. australes exhibited mouse toxicities. Conclusions/Significance This study revealed a surprising diversity of Japanese Gambierdiscus and the distribution of five species/phylotypes displayed clear geographical patterns in Japanese coastal areas. The SSU rDNA and the LSU rDNA D8–D10 as genetic markers are recommended for further use.
NADPH Oxidases: Insights into Selected Functions and Mechanisms of Action in Cancer and Stem Cells

NADPH oxidases (NOX) are reactive oxygen species- (ROS-) generating enzymes regulating numerous redox-dependent signaling pathways. NOX are important regulators of cell differentiation, growth, and proliferation and of mechanisms, important for a wide range of processes from embryonic development, through tissue regeneration to the development and spread of cancer. In this review, we discuss the roles of NOX and NOX-derived ROS in the functioning of stem cells and cancer stem cells and in selected aspects of cancer cell physiology. Understanding the functions and complex activities of NOX is important for the application of stem cells in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and development of new therapies toward invasive forms of cancers.
Atomic-scale analysis of nanoindentation behavior of high-entropy alloy

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the elastic and plastic deformations of indentation in FeCrCuAlNi high-entropy alloy (HEA). The indentation tests are carried out using spherical rigid indenter to investigate the effects of high-entropy and severe lattice distortion in terms of shear strain, indentation force, surface morphology, defect structure, dislocation evolution and radial distribution function on the deformation processes. It can be found that when the indentation depth increases, the shear stress requires for the occurrence of the contact area between the indenter and the substrate increased, which is attributable to a higher probability to observe the dislocation evolution under a large indentation depth. The indentation test also shows that the equal element addition can significantly improve the mechanical properties of HEA compared with the conventional alloy. Based on the Hertzian fitting, the FeCrCuAlNi HEA has the Young’s modulus of 161GPa and hardness of 15.4GPa, respectively. These values are higher than that of traditional metal materials, due to the low stacking fault energy and the dense atomic arrangement in the slip plane of HEA. In the plastic region, the Fe element causes the more stable crystal structure, much stronger than the Cu element, presumably resulted from a variety of crystal structures for Fe in the multicomponent FeCrCuAlNi alloy. Further, this effective strategy is used to accelerate the discovery of excellent mechanical properties of HEAs.
Micromachined piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer with ultra-wide frequency bandwidth

An ultrasonic transducer with a wide frequency bandwidth is always preferred for diagnostic ultrasound imaging, because a wide frequency bandwidth can reduce the duration of an ultrasonic pulse and enhance the axial imaging resolution. However, the frequency bandwidth of both conventional ultrasonic transducer and normal piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) is quite limited. To overcome this limitation, the mode-merging pMUT is presented in this letter. By using the rectangular membrane with large length/width aspect ratio, several resonant modes are excited within a narrow frequency range. When this pMUT works in a largely damped medium, excited modes are merged together and result in an ultra-wide bandwidth. A −6 dB bandwidth of 95% is measured in water for the proposed pMUT without matching layer, which is much broader than that of conventional pMUTs. Benefited from such ultra-wide frequency bandwidth, the pulse duration of 1 μs is achieved at a central frequency of 1.24 MHz. If this ultra-wide bandwidth pMUT is utilized to replace the conventional transducer for diagnostic ultrasound imaging, the axial resolution can be significantly enhanced without compromising imaging depth.
BioTracker: An Open-Source Computer Vision Framework for Visual Animal Tracking

The study of animal behavior increasingly relies on (semi-) automatic methods for the extraction of relevant behavioral features from video or picture data. To date, several specialized software products exist to detect and track animals' positions in simple (laboratory) environments. Tracking animals in their natural environments, however, often requires substantial customization of the image processing algorithms to the problem-specific image characteristics. Here we introduce BioTracker, an open-source computer vision framework, that provides programmers with core functionalities that are essential parts of a tracking software, such as video I/O, graphics overlays and mouse and keyboard interfaces. BioTracker additionally provides a number of different tracking algorithms suitable for a variety of image recording conditions. The main feature of BioTracker is however the straightforward implementation of new problem-specific tracking modules and vision algorithms that can build upon BioTracker's core functionalities. With this open-source framework the scientific community can accelerate their research and focus on the development of new vision algorithms.
Tracking Control of Marine Craft in the port-Hamiltonian Framework: A Virtual Differential Passivity Approach

In this work we propose a virtual contraction-based control (v-CBC) design approach to the tracking problem in marine craft modeled as port-Hamiltonian (pH) systems. The design method consists of three main steps: i) construct a virtual control system which has all the original marine craft pH model's solutions embedded; ii) design a control law that makes the virtual control system contracting with a desired steady-state trajectory; iii) close the loop of the original marine craft pH model with above controllers. Due to the rigid body nature of marine craft, two v-CBC schemes are proposed; one in a body frame and another in an inertial frame. We show how the intrinsic structure of pH models and their workless forces can be exploited to construct virtual control systems for marine craft in both frames. The closed-loop system's performance is evaluated on simulations.
Carrier Injection Induced Switching of Supper-lattice GeTe/Sb2Te3 Phase Change Memories

We propose a new on-off switching mechanism for super-lattice GeTe/Sb2Te3 phase change memories (PCM) from the atomistic level. Relative energy stability between high resistivity state (HRS) and low resistivity state (LRS) can be controlled by injecting carries into supper-lattice GeTe/ Sb2Te3 PCRAM, which drastically accelerates the structural change between HRS and LRS and is also suitable for high program/erase (P/E) cycles endurance.
E-Cube: multi-dimensional event sequence analysis using hierarchical pattern query sharing

Many modern applications, including online financial feeds, tag-based mass transit systems and RFID-based supply chain management systems transmit real-time data streams. There is a need for event stream processing technology to analyze this vast amount of sequential data to enable online operational decision making. Existing techniques such as traditional online analytical processing (OLAP) systems are not designed for real-time pattern-based operations, while state-of-the-art Complex Event Processing (CEP) systems designed for sequence detection do not support OLAP operations. We propose a novel E-Cube model which combines CEP and OLAP techniques for efficient multi-dimensional event pattern analysis at different abstraction levels. Our analysis of the interrelationships in both concept abstraction and pattern refinement among queries facilitates the composition of these queries into an integrated E-Cube hierarchy. Based on this E-Cube hierarchy, strategies of drill-down (refinement from abstract to more specific patterns) and of roll-up (generalization from specific to more abstract patterns) are developed for the efficient workload evaluation. Our proposed execution strategies reuse intermediate results along both the concept and the pattern refinement relationships between queries. Based on this foundation, we design a cost-driven adaptive optimizer called Chase, that exploits the above reuse strategies for optimal E-Cube hierarchy execution. Our experimental studies comparing alternate strategies on a real world financial data stream under different workload conditions demonstrate the superiority of the Chase method. In particular, our Chase execution in many cases performs ten fold faster than the state-of-the art strategy for real stock market query workloads.
Similarities and Differences between Silver Ions and Silver in Nanoforms as Antibacterial Agents

Silver is considered as antibacterial agent with well-known mode of action and bacterial resistance against it is well described. The development of nanotechnology provided different methods for the modification of the chemical and physical structure of silver, which may increase its antibacterial potential. The physico-chemical properties of silver nanoparticles and their interaction with living cells differs substantially from those of silver ions. Moreover, the variety of the forms and characteristics of various silver nanoparticles are also responsible for differences in their antibacterial mode of action and probably bacterial mechanism of resistance. The paper discusses in details the aforementioned aspects of silver activity.