Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combating Fake News: A Data Management and Mining Perspective

Fake news is a major threat to global democracy resulting in diminished trust in government, journalism and civil society. The public popularity of social media and social networks has caused a contagion of fake news where conspiracy theories, disinformation and extreme views ﬂourish. Detection and mitigation of fake news is one of the fundamental problems of our times and has attracted widespread attention. While fact checking websites such as snopes, politifact and major companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have taken preliminary steps towards addressing fake news, much more remains to be done. As an interdisciplinary topic, various facets of fake news have been studied by communities as diverse as machine learning, databases, journalism, political science and many more. The objective of this tutorial is two-fold. First, we wish to familiarize the database community with the eﬀorts by other communities on combating fake news. We provide a panoramic view of the state-of-the-art of research on various aspects including detection, propagation, mitigation, and intervention of fake news. Next, we provide a concise and intuitive summary of prior research by the database community and discuss how it could be used to counteract fake news. The tutorial covers research from areas such as data integration, truth discovery and fusion, probabilistic databases, knowledge graphs and crowdsourcing from the lens of fake news. Eﬀective tools for addressing fake news could only be built by leveraging the synergistic relationship between database and other research communities. We hope that our tutorial provides an impetus towards such synthesis of ideas and the creation of new ones.
Non-intrusive Load Disaggregation Based on Kernel Density Estimation

Aiming at the problem of high cost and difficult implementation of high frequency non-intrusive load decomposition method, this paper proposes a new method based on kernel density estimation(KDE) for low frequency NILM (Non-intrusive load monitoring). The method establishes power reference model of electricity load in different working conditions and appliance’s possible combinations first, then probability distribution is calculated as appliances features by kernel density estimation. After that, target power data is divided by step changes, whose distributions will be compared with reference models, and the most similar reference model will be chosen as the decomposed consequence. The proposed approach was tested with data from the GREEND public data set, it showed better performance in terms of energy disaggregation accuracy compared with many traditional NILM approaches. Our results show good performance which can achieve more than 93% accuracy in simulation.
Reaction-Based Fluorescent Probes for the Detection and Imaging of Reactive Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Sulfur Species

Conspectus This Account describes a range of strategies for the development of fluorescent probes for detecting reactive oxygen species (ROS), reactive nitrogen species (RNS), and reactive (redox-active) sulfur species (RSS). Many ROS/RNS have been implicated in pathological processes such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and aging, while many RSS play important roles in maintaining redox homeostasis, serving as antioxidants and acting as free radical scavengers. Fluorescence-based systems have emerged as one of the best ways to monitor the concentrations and locations of these often very short lived species. Because of the high levels of sensitivity and in particular their ability to be used for temporal and spatial sampling for in vivo imaging applications. As a direct result, there has been a huge surge in the development of fluorescent probes for sensitive and selective detection of ROS, RNS, and RSS within cellular environments. However, cellular environments are extremely complex, often with more than one species involved in a given biochemical process. As a result, there has been a rise in the development of dual-responsive fluorescent probes (AND-logic probes) that can monitor the presence of more than one species in a biological environment. Our aim with this Account is to introduce the fluorescent probes that we have developed for in vitro and in vivo measurement of ROS, RNS, and RSS. Fluorescence-based sensing mechanisms used in the construction of the probes include photoinduced electron transfer, intramolecular charge transfer, excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT), and fluorescence resonance energy transfer. In particular, probes for hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorous acid, superoxide, peroxynitrite, glutathione, cysteine, homocysteine, and hydrogen sulfide are discussed. In addition, we describe the development of AND-logic-based systems capable of detecting two species, such as peroxynitrite and glutathione. One of the most interesting advances contained in this Account is our extension of indicator displacement assays (IDAs) to reaction-based indicator displacement assays (RIAs). In an IDA system, an indicator is allowed to bind reversibly to a receptor. Then a competitive analyte is introduced into the system, resulting in displacement of the indicator from the host, which in turn modulates the optical signal. With an RIA-based system, the indicator is cleaved from a preformed receptor–indicator complex rather than being displaced by the analyte. Nevertheless, without a doubt the most significant result contained in this Account is the use of an ESIPT-based probe for the simultaneous sensing of fibrous proteins/peptides AND environmental ROS/RNS.
Various proline food sources and blood pressure: substitution analysis

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the association of total proline intake, proline of various food sources, and substitution analysis for proline of food sources with blood pressure (BP) and 3.1-year incidence of hypertension in the framework of the Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study. The cohort consisted of 4287 participants (41.9% male), aged ≥ 20–70 years. In fully-adjusted model, individuals in the highest tertile for proline intake had an increased risk of incident hypertension than those in the lowest one (OR: 1.45; 95%CI: 1.06–1.97; p for trend: .017). Replacing proline of cheese and legumes source with that of yogurt, poultry, milk, and red meat source was associated with significant negative β coefficient for BP. The present study indicated that high dietary intakes of proline may increase the risk of incident hypertension. Also, substituting proline intake of cheese and legumes by those of proline intake of meats and milk is associated with a lower risk of high BP.
BioFaceNet: Deep Biophysical Face Image Interpretation

In this paper we present BioFaceNet, a deep CNN that learns to decompose a single face image into biophysical parameters maps, diffuse and specular shading maps as well as estimating the spectral power distribution of the scene illuminant and the spectral sensitivity of the camera. The network comprises a fully convolutional encoder for estimating the spatial maps with a fully connected branch for estimating the vector quantities. The network is trained using a self-supervised appearance loss computed via a model-based decoder. The task is highly underconstrained so we impose a number of model-based priors. Skin spectral reflectance is restricted to a biophysical model, we impose a statistical prior on camera spectral sensitivities, a physical constraint on illumination spectra, a sparsity prior on specular reflections and direct supervision on diffuse shading using a rough shape proxy. We show convincing qualitative results on in-the-wild data and introduce a benchmark for quantitative evaluation on this new task.
Mathematically Modeling Spillover Dynamics of Emerging Zoonoses with Intermediate Hosts

The World Health Organization describes zoonotic diseases as a major pandemic threat, and modeling the behavior of such diseases is a key component of their control. Many emerging zoonoses, such as SARS, Nipah, and Hendra, mutated from their wild type while circulating in an intermediate host population, usually a domestic species, to become more transmissible among humans, and moreover, this transmission route will only become more likely as agriculture and trade intensifies around the world. Passage through an intermediate host enables many otherwise rare diseases to become better adapted to humans, and so understanding this process with mathematical epidemiological models is necessary to prevent epidemics of emerging zoonoses, guide policy interventions in public health, and predict the behavior of an epidemic. In this paper, we account for spillovers of a zoonotic disease mutating in an intermediate host by means of modeling transmission dynamics within and between three host species, namely, wild reservoir, intermediate domestic animals, and humans. We calculate the basic reproductive number of the pathogen, present critical conditions for the emergence dynamics of zoonosis, and perform stability analysis of admissible disease equilibria. Our analytical results agree well with long-term simulations of the system. We find that in the presence of biologically realistic interspecies transmission parameters, a zoonotic disease can establish itself in humans even if it fails to persist in its reservoir and intermediate host species. Our model and results can be used to understand the dynamic behavior of any zoonosis with intermediate hosts and assist efforts to protect public health.
Cancer diagnoses after emergency GP referral or A&E attendance in England: determinants and time trends in Routes to Diagnosis data, 2006–2015

Background Diagnosis of cancer as an emergency is associated with poor outcomes but has a complex aetiology. Examining determinants and time trends in diagnostic routes can help to appreciate the critical role of general practice over time in diagnostic pathways for patients with cancer. Aim To examine sociodemographic, cancer site, and temporal associations with type of presentation among patients with cancer diagnosed as emergencies. Design and setting Analysis of Routes to Diagnosis data, 2006–2015, for patients with cancer in England. Method The authors estimated adjusted proportions of emergency presentation after emergency GP referral (GP-EP) or presentation to accident and emergency (AE-EP), by patient sex, age, deprivation group, and year of diagnosis using multivariable regression. Results Among 554 621 patients presenting as emergencies, 24% (n = 130 372) presented as GP-EP, 62% as AE-EP (n = 346 192), and 14% (n = 78 057) through Other-EP sub-routes. Patients presenting as emergencies were more likely to have been GP-referred if they lived in less deprived areas or were subsequently diagnosed with pancreatic, gallbladder, or ovarian cancer, or acute leukaemia. During the study period the proportion and number of GP-EPs nearly halved (31%, n = 17 364, in 2006; 17%, n = 9155 in 2015), while that of AE-EP increased (55%, n = 31 049 to 68%, n = 36 868). Conclusion Patients presenting as emergencies with cancers characterised by symptoms/signs tolerable by patients but appropriately alarming to doctors (for example, pancreatic cancer manifesting as painless jaundice) are over-represented among cases whose emergency presentation involved GP referral. Reductions in diagnoses of cancer through an emergency presentation likely reflect both the continually increasing use of 2-week-wait GP referrals during the study period and reductions in emergency GP referrals.
A Matching Method for Two-Stage Turbocharging System

The turbine system of a two-stage turbocharger composed of high pressure turbine, low pressure turbine and by-pass valve decides distribution and utilization of exhaust gas energy and influence performance of two-stage turbocharger in whole operational conditions. Besides, characteristics of turbine is expressed by envelop line of characteristic lines in different speeds. So turbine can be conveniently selected compared with compressor with similarity theory. Therefore two-stage turbocharger matching begins from turbine system matching in the paper. In two-stage turbocharger, cooler efficiency, cooler loss and by-pass valve open besides turbochargers will influence turbocharging system performance and design of cooler and by-pass valve are important contents of turbocharging system matching. The paper matched inter cooler, by-pass valve open, compressors and turbines jointly. Calculation model for turbocharger matching was built, and turbine performance is get from reference turbine based on similarity theory; influence of compressor ratio distribution, cooler efficiency and pressure drop in cooler imposing on compressor work was analyzed; and influence of turbine flow capacity and by-pass valve imposing on output working in expanding process was studied; the method for matching of two-stage turbocharging system in whole operational condition is studied Matching analysis was made aiming at two-stage turbocharging system of a type of high power density diesel engine, and design for turbocharging system was finished. Matching result using the method is compared to matching result using traditional method. Analysis result proves that using the method matching points in different operational conditions are located in more reasonable zone of compressor MAP.Copyright © 2014 by ASME
Asynchronous Consensus Without Rounds

Fault tolerant consensus protocols usually involve ordered rounds of voting between a collection of processes. In this paper, we derive a general specification of fault tolerant asynchronous consensus protocols and present a class of consensus protocols that refine this specification without using rounds. Crash-tolerant protocols in this class use 3f+1 processes, while Byzantine-tolerant protocols use 5f+1 processes.
Use of the Secreted Proteome of Trametes versicolor for Controlling the Cereal Pathogen Fusarium langsethiae

Fusarium langsethiae is amongst the most recently discovered pathogens of small grains cereals. F. langsethiae is the main producer, in Europe, of T2 and HT-toxins in small grain cereals, albeit often asymptomatic; this makes its control challenging. The European Union (EU) is pushing hard on the use of biocontrol agents to minimize the use of fungicides and pesticides, which are detrimental to the environment and responsible for serious pollution of the soil and superficial water. In line with EU directives (e.g., 128/2009), here we report the use of protein fractions, purified from the culture filtrate of the basidiomycete Trametes versicolor, for controlling F. langsethiae. T. versicolor, a so-called medicinal mushroom which is applied as a co-adjuvant in oncology and other pathologies as a producer of biological response modifiers. In this study, the exo-proteome of T. versicolor proved highly efficient in inhibiting the growth of F. langsethiae and the biosynthesis of the T2 toxin. Results are promising for its future use as a sustainable product to control F. langsethiae infection in cereals under field conditions.
MD simulations reveal alternate conformations of the oxyanion hole in the Zika virus NS2B/NS3 protease

Recent crystallography studies have shown that the binding site oxyanion hole plays an important role in inhibitor binding, but can exist in two conformations (active/inactive). We have undertaken molecular dynamics (MD) calculations to better understand oxyanion hole dynamics and thermodynamics. We find that the Zika virus (ZIKV) NS2B/NS3 protease maintains a stable closed conformation over multiple 100‐ns conventional MD simulations in both the presence and absence of inhibitors. The S1, S2, and S3 pockets are stable as well. However, in two of eight simulations, the A132‐G133 peptide bond in the binding pocket of S1' spontaneously flips to form a 310‐helix that corresponds to the inactive conformation of the oxyanion hole, and then maintains this conformation until the end of the 100‐ns conventional MD simulations without inversion of the flip. This conformational change affects the S1' pocket in ZIKV NS2B/NS3 protease active site, which is important for small molecule binding. The simulation results provide evidence at the atomic level that the inactive conformation of the oxyanion hole is more favored energetically when no specific interactions are formed between substrate/inhibitor and oxyanion hole residues. Interestingly, however, transition between the active and inactive conformation of the oxyanion hole can be observed by boosting the valley potential in accelerated MD simulations. This supports a proposed induced‐fit mechanism of ZIKV NS2B/NS3 protease from computational methods and provides useful direction to enhance inhibitor binding predictions in structure‐based drug design.
Synthesis of VLIW Accelerators from Formal Descriptions in a Real-Time Multi-Core Environment

Designing, programming and design space exploration of predictable Real-Time systems on Heterogeneous Multi-Core platforms is a very complex task. The increasing validation costs and time-to-market pressure creates a desire to build systems that are correct by construction. Formal description based on Model of Computations (MoCs) is a convenient way to create high-level models of such systems. The MoCs provide abstraction and high level modeling through a clear set of rules based on mathematics, which can be used as input for system synthesis. A formal synthesis flow would then ensure that the resulting real-time system is both predictable and correct by construction, provided that all transformations used in the flow can be verified/trusted. In this paper we show how a Real-Time computation node in an MPSoC system, described using the Synchronous MoC, can be transformed into a VLIW accelerator. The created accelerator is incorporated as a computation node in a heterogeneous multi-core system implemented on an FPGA.
K-CONFIG: Using Failing Test Cases to Generate Test Cases in GCC Compilers

The correctness of compilers is instrumental in the safety and reliability of other software systems, as bugs in compilers can produce programs that do not reflect the intents of programmers. Compilers are complex software systems due to the complexity of optimization. GCC is an optimizing C compiler that has been used in building operating systems and many other system software. In this paper, we describe K-CONFIG, an approach that uses the bugs reported in the GCC repository to generate new test inputs. Our main insight is that the features appearing in the bug reports are likely to reappear in the future bugs, as the bugfixes can be incomplete or those features may be inherently challenging to implement hence more prone to errors. Our approach first clusters the failing test input extracted from the bug reports into clusters of similar test inputs. It then uses these clusters to create configurations for Csmith, the most popular test generator for C compilers. In our experiments on two versions of GCC, our approach could trigger up to 36 miscompilation failures, and 179 crashes, while Csmith with the default configuration did not trigger any failures. This work signifies the benefits of analyzing and using the reported bugs in the generation of new test inputs.
Altered oxidative stress and antioxidant defence in skeletal muscle during the first year following spinal cord injury

Oxidative stress promotes protein degradation and apoptosis in skeletal muscle undergoing atrophy. We aimed to determine whether spinal cord injury leads to changes in oxidative stress, antioxidant capacity, and apoptotic signaling in human skeletal muscle during the first year after spinal cord injury. Vastus lateralis biopsies were obtained from seven individuals 1, 3, and 12 months after spinal cord injury and from seven able‐bodied controls. Protein content of enzymes involved in reactive oxygen species production and detoxification, and apoptotic signaling were analyzed by western blot. Protein carbonylation and 4‐hydroxynonenal protein adducts were measured as markers of oxidative damage. Glutathione content was determined fluorometrically. Protein content of NADPH oxidase 2, xanthine oxidase, and pro‐caspase‐3 was increased at 1 and 3 months after spinal cord injury compared to able‐bodied controls. Furthermore, total and reduced glutathione content was increased at 1 and 3 months after spinal cord injury. Conversely, mitochondrial complexes and superoxide dismutase 2 protein content were decreased 12 months after spinal cord injury compared to able‐bodied controls. In conclusion, we provide indirect evidence of increased reactive oxygen species production and increased apoptotic signaling at 1 and 3 months after spinal cord injury. Concomitant increases in glutathione antioxidant defences may reflect adaptations poised to maintain redox homeostasis in skeletal muscle following spinal cord injury.
Framing Visual Musicology through Methodology Transfer

In this position paper, we frame the field of Visual Musicology by providing an overview of well-established musicological sub-domains and their corresponding analytic and visualization tasks. To foster collaborative, interdisciplinary research, we discuss relevant data and domain characteristics. We give a description of the problem space, as well as the design space of musicology and discuss how existing problem-design mappings or solutions from other fields can be transferred to musicology. We argue that, through methodology transfer, established methods can be exploited to solve current musicological problems and show exemplary mappings from analytics fields related to text, geospatial, time-series, and other high-dimensional data to musicology. Finally, we point out open challenges, discuss research gaps, and highlight future research opportunities.
Insight into erythrocyte phospholipid molecular flux in healthy humans and in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome

Although the distribution of cellular membrane phospholipid composition is well characterised in human erythrocytes, in-vivo turnover and dynamic flux of phospholipids between plasma and erythrocytes in physiological and in particular during disease states are mostly unknown. Erythrocyte mass primarily consisted of lipids and phosphatidylcholine (PC) contributes to the significant proportion of phospholipid membrane composition. Esterified membrane PC can be utilised during pathological processes to generate pro and anti-inflammatory lipid mediators, which can contribute to the pathogenesis of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In this study, utilising isotope labelling of choline and analytical methods with electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS), we characterised individual molecular composition and dynamic exchange of PC, sphingomyelins (SM) and lysophosphatidylcholines (LPC) between plasma and erythrocytes. In ARDS patients, there were significant alterations in PC molecular composition, coupled with a continuous loss of arachidonoyl-PC species over time. Infusion of methyl-D9-choline chloride resulted in enrichment of labelled choline into plasma PC and LPC via CDP-choline pathway with subsequent incorporation into erythrocyte PC. As expected, erythrocyte methyl-D9 PC enrichment is much slower than plasma. Patients had much faster and higher fractional enrichment of all PC and LPC molecules suggesting increased flux between plasma and erythrocytes. There was a particular pattern of incorporation, where the arachidonoyl-PC species achieved equilibrium with plasma rapidly and retained highest concentrations of enrichment compared to the other PC species. Increased enrichment of arachidonoyl-PC coupled with virtually no increase or depletion of its concentrations suggests the possibility of substrate donation for other cell types for the participation of eicosanoid biosynthesis during inflammatory conditions like ARDS. In summary, this study revealed an alerted pattern erythrocyte molecular phospholipid composition and flux in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome and the pathological consequences of these changes needs further exploration.