Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Competition among Risk-Averse Newsvendors

We study in the classic newsvendor framework inventory competition with spillover demand between risk-averse duopoly firms. We establish existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium and characterize the sensitivity of the equilibrium order quantities to an increase in both firms’ risk-aversion. We report two sets of results. First, we provide fairly general necessary and sufficient conditions under which one of the firms increases its equilibrium quantity in response to higher risk-aversion. These conditions reflect two countervailing effects of increasing risk-aversion, a direct own risk-aversion effect, and an indirect demand spillover effect. Second, we report more specific results for the case where both firms have identically distributed binary primary demand and constant absolute risk-aversion (CARA) utility. We identify which of the firms responds with a higher equilibrium order to an increase in risk-aversion, depending on the initial equilibrium and on the competitors’ underto overstocking cost ratios, initial risk-aversion, and demand spillover fractions. We further show how these effects depend on primary demand correlation.
Functional implications and course Neurocognition and functional outcome in schizophrenia : filling in the gaps

Introduction and overview The goal of treatments for schizophrenia has moved beyond management of psychotic symptoms to the goal of “recovery. ” Recovery refers to achieving independent living, vocational or educational activities, and satisfying interpersonal relationships (Kopelowicz et al., 2005; Liberman & Kopelowicz, 2005). This goal remains elusive for many patients with schizophrenia, as evidenced by the disappointing statistics on the worldwide level of disability associated with the illness (Murray & Lopez, 1996; WHO, 2008). An important step for public health improvement is to identify the determinants of poor functioning that interfere with successful community adaptation. One of the most consistent correlates and determinants of functional outcome for individuals with schizophrenia has been neurocognition (i.e., episodic memory, attention, working memory, reasoning and problem solving abilities, and speed of processing). Relationships between neurocognition and functional outcome have been well documented in several reviews of this literature (Green, 1996; Green et al., 2000; Green et al., 2004). The relationships are present in cross-sectional studies, as well as in prospective studies in which neurocognition is assessed at baseline and outcome is assessed one or two years later (Green et al., 2004). The specific types of functional outcome vary across studies, but they usually include aspects of role functioning (work, housekeeping, school), independent living, and/or social functioning with friends and family. Associations between neurocognition and functional outcome are typically stronger than those found between psychotic symptoms and functional outcome, and sometimes even stronger than those between negative symptoms and outcome. Most of the studies in the reviews examined patients with chronic illness, but the linkages are also present in first-episode and prodromal (high-risk) samples (Carrion et al., 2011; Nuechterlein et al., 2011). While the magnitude of these relationships are often modest at the level of individual cognitive domains, a substantial amount of variance in outcome can be explained when summary scores that combine multiple domains are examined (Green et al., 2000). Given the well-established nature of this literature, this chapter will not conduct a new review. Instead, it will attempt to place this literature in a larger context. Although the
Spatio-Temporal Visual Analytics for Pandemic Response and Decision Support

This research views both individual-based daily activities and influenza spread as spatial interaction problems, where locations interact with each other via the visitors that they share or the virus that is transmitted from one place to another. The goal of this research is twofold: (1) to develop a general visual analytic approach to synthesize very large interaction data sets and visually present patterns; and (2) to develop a specific pandemic analysis and decisionsupport system that be used to evaluate various response/containment strategies and to support decision-makings in emergent situations.
Management of Natal Teeth: Paediatric Dentist Role

The occurrence of teeth at the time of birth is called natal teeth. The incidence of this anomaly has been approximately 1:1400 to 1:3500 live births. Most commonly seen in mandibular primary central incisor region and usually occur in pairs. The present case scenario describes about the management of natal teeth in a seven day old new born baby and also the role of paediatric dentist in its management as well as guidance for medical practitioners and parents.
Explorations in Spatial Audio and Perception for Virtual Reality

A great deal of the Virtual Reality research and implementation is focused on the graphics and hardware associated with immersive virtual reality experiences. To further enhance the VR experience, we wanted to explore the ways in which audio contributes to the immersive nature of the medium. Specifically we, investigated how the perceived audio in a virtual environment changes with knowledge of the position of the listener across a wide range of frequencies, implemented with a Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF). Furthermore, we built a virtual experience to learn about audio perception, like windowing, the Fourier domain, and audio processing. We use the IMU sensor data to enable interaction with the audio processing in our scene, like a virtual reality version of the Chrome Music Labs.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Screening Program in a HIV Outpatient Clinic of Northern Italy

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is under diagnosed in HIV-infected people and screening guidelines are lacking. This study aims to determinate the feasibility of a screening program and the prevalence of COPD under diagnosis in a HIV-positive cohort. We screened all outpatients attending their routine visit for HIV monitoring at the Clinic of Spedali Civili General Hospital, Brescia, from February 2015 to January 2016. The screening program consisted in: a) a questionnaire, b) a pre-bronchodilator peak flow measured with portable spirometer c) a post-bronchodilator peak flow measured with spirometer performed during a Pneumologist visit, for people who were positive for dot b. We invited 1463 subjects but only 89.6% of them completed the program. Two-hundred-eighy-two had a positive questionnarie and 65 patients showed respiratory impairment at portable spirometer. Diagnostic spirometry evidenced COPD in 22 patients (1.7% of all patients), among them 2 patients (9.1%) had severe grade COPD (GOLD stage 3, according to the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease). Only 89.6% of patients completed the program. Patients with, compared to patients without exacerbations, showed lower CD4 count at screening (534/mm3 vs 781/mm3 for patients with GOLD 1 and 495/mm3 vs 781/mm3 for patients with GOLD 2). The positive predictive value (the probability that a patient with abnormal test results had truly a COPD), was 33.8% for COPD screening questionnaire and the portable spirometer applied in series. Screening programs seems to be problematic as part of routine practice in HIV-infected patients: one in ten patients did not completed the program. Moreover, we found a prevalence of COPD under diagnosed of 1.7%.
SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATION OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES AS Fe 2 + AND Mn 2 + METAL-IONS CONTAMINANT REMOVAL MEDIA IN GROUNDWATER SAMPLES

The interest in the application of nanomaterials has been the focus of a number of scientific investigations in recent times. This drive has resulted mainly from the ease of synthesis, large surface area for adsorption, and tunable surface chemistry and functionalization of these nanomaterials. In this work, silver nanoparticles were synthesized and employed as metal–ion contaminant removal media for Mn and Fe in groundwater from the Cape Coast Metropolis. The nanoparticles were synthesized using reduction method. A bathochromic shift of the UV-vis absorbance measurements was used as an indication of physisorption onto the silver nanoparticles. A bathochromic shift from 400 to 440 nm from adsorption of Mn and 400 to 460 for Fe respectively onto silver nanoparticles were observed. Adsorption characteristics of the nanoparticles were evaluated at various incubation periods by observing the bathochromic shift and hypochromic effect in the absorption bands of the metal ions. The amount of metal ions removed through the application of the nanoparticles to standard solutions after fourteen days incubation were iron: 60–88% and manganese: 96–99%, whereas the highest removal efficiencies in groundwater wells were 41.02 for iron and 46.03 for manganese. It was found that the metal concentrations reduced as the incubation periods were increased.
DYNAMICAL BEHAVIOUR AND EXACT SOLUTIONS OF THIRTEENTH ORDER DERIVATIVE NONLINEAR SCHRÖDINGER EQUATION

In this paper, we considered the model of the thirteenth order derivatives of nonlinear Schrödinger equations. It is shown that a wave packet ansatz inserted into these equations leads to an integrable Hamiltonian dynamical sub-system. By using bifurcation theory of planar dynamical systems, in different parametric regions, we determined the phase portraits. In each of these parametric regions we obtain possible exact explicit parametric representation of the traveling wave solutions corresponding to homoclinic, hetroclinic and periodic orbits.
Gossypol-induced fitness gain and increased resistance to deltamethrin in beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua (Hübner).

BACKGROUND In plant-insect interactions, phytotoxins such as gossypol, exert a defensive role on behalf of the plant by interfering with the essential metabolic, biochemical and physiological pathways of herbivorous insects. The beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua (Hübner), is a key pest for many important crops including a range of vegetables, ornamentals, and cotton. In this study, we investigated how resistance to deltamethrin relates to enzyme activity in gossypol-pretreated larvae of S. exigua. RESULTS Following selection with deltamethrin insecticides on gossypol-pretreated larvae for 10 generations, the Gos-SEL population developed a 113.29-fold resistance. Under the same conditions, the Delta-SEL selected population showed a 69.76-fold increase in resistance along with corresponding levels of xenobiotic defense enzyme activity. Similarly, the fecundity of the Delta-SEL population together with male and female longevity were found to be significantly lower when compared with the Gos-SEL population and the laboratory susceptible-strain group (SS-Strain). In addition, the activities of cytochrome P450s in S. exigua were significantly enhanced when the insects were fed on a deltamethrin and gossypol-pretreated diet compared with being fed on deltamethrin alone. CONCLUSION The reproductive capacity of S. exigua is significantly reduced in Delta-SEL and Gos-SEL populations compared with the control group (SS-Strain). Elevation of the major detoxification enzyme cytochrome P450 monooxygenase and esterase might have an important role in inducing tolerance to deltamethrin in gossypol-fed S. exigua populations. This study enhances our understanding of detoxification enzyme pathways for S. exigua gene expression and their role in responses to insecticides and plant secondary metabolites. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.
Predicting Glycemia in Type 1 Diabetes Patients: Experiments with XG-Boost

Type 1 diabetes patients must self-administer insulin through injections or insulin-pump therapy, requiring careful lifestyle management around meals and physical activity. Accurate blood glucose prediction could increase patient quality of life, and foreknowledge of hypoglycemia or hyper-glycemia could mitigate risks and save lives. For the 2018 BGLP Challenge, we experiment primarily with XGBoost to predict blood glucose levels at a 30-minute horizon in the OhioT1DM dataset. Our experiments show that XGBoost can be a competitive predictor of blood glucose levels, as compared to prior research, and that feature signals from different sources contribute in varying capacity for improved predictive ability of XGBoost.
Understanding Collaborative Filtering with Galois Connections

In this paper, we explain how Galois connection and related operators between sets of users and items naturally arise in user-item data for forming neighbourhoods of a target user or item for Collaborative Filtering. We compare the properties of these operators and their applicability in simple collaborative user-to-user and item-to-item setting. Moreover, we propose a new neighbourhood-forming operator based on pair-wise similarity ranking of users, which takes intermediate place between the studied closure operators and its relaxations in terms of neighbourhood size and demonstrates comparatively good Precision-Recall trade-off. In addition, we compare the studied neighbourhood-forming operators in the collaborative filtering setting against simple but strong benchmark, the SlopeOne algorithm, over bimodal cross-validation on MovieLens dataset.
Nonmedical Use of Stimulants Is Associated With Riskier Sexual Practices and Other Forms of Impulsivity

Background: This study sought to examine the occurrence of the nonmedical use of prescription stimulants (amphetamines and methylphenidate) in a university sample and their associated physical and mental health correlates, including potential relationships with risky sexual practices. Methods: A 156-item anonymous online survey was distributed via e-mail to a sample of 9449 university students. Current use of alcohol and drugs, psychological and physical status, and academic performance were assessed, along with questionnaire-based measures of impulsivity and compulsivity. Results: A total of 3421 participants (59.7% female) were included in the analysis. 6.7% of the sample reported current/recent nonmedical use of prescription stimulants, while an additional 5.8% reported misuse in the past. Nonmedical use of prescription stimulants was associated with lower grade point averages, and with taking a broad range of other drugs (including alcohol, nicotine, illicit substances, and consumption of caffeinated soft drinks). Nonmedical use of stimulants was also significantly associated with impulsivity (Barratt scale), prior treatment for substance use problems, and elevated occurrence of disordered gambling, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety; but not depression symptoms or binge-eating disorder (though it was associated with using drugs to lose weight). The relationship with probable attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on screening was not significant but was numerically elevated. Finally, those using nonmedical prescribed stimulants were significantly more sexually active (including at a younger age), and were less likely to use barrier contraception. Conclusions: Nonmedical use of prescription stimulants is common in young adults and has profound public health associations including with a profundity of other drug use (licit and illicit), certain mental health diagnoses (especially gambling, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder ), worse scholastic performance, and riskier sexual practices. The majority of people with nonmedical use of prescription stimulants do not have ADHD, and its link with current ADHD symptoms was less marked than for certain other disorders. Clinicians should screen for the misuse of prescription stimulants as they may be associated with a range of problematic behaviors. Risk of diversion (which may be higher for those living in shared accommodation and those with substance use disorder history) merits careful assessment before prescribing stimulant medication.
More legislation, more violence? The impact of Dodd-Frank in the DRC

The Dodd Frank Act was passed by the US Congress in July 2010 and included a provision—Section 1502—that aimed to break the link between conflict and minerals in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. To date there is only one rigorous quantitative analysis that investigates the impact of Dodd-Frank on local conflict events. Looking at the short-term impact (2011–2012), it finds that the policy backfired. This study builds on a larger, more representative, dataset of mining sites and extends the time horizon by three years (2013–2015). The results indicate that the policy also backfired in the longer run, especially in areas home to gold mines. For territories with the average number of gold mines, the introduction of Dodd-Frank increased the incidence of battles with 44%; looting with 51% and violence against civilians with 28%, compared to pre-Dodd Frank averages. Delving deeper into the impact of the conflict minerals legislation is important, as President Trump suspended the legislation in February 2017 for a two-year period, ordering his administration to replace it with another policy.
Advances in the Electronics for Cyclic Voltammetry: the Case of Gas Detection by Using Microfabricated Electrodes

This paper presents an advanced voltammetric system to be used as electronic tongue for liquid and gas analysis. It has been designed to be more flexible and accurate with respect to other existing and similar systems. It features improved electronics and additional operative conditions. Among others these include the possibility to optically excite the solution and to treat the output signal by a differentiation process in order to better evidence the existence of small details in the response curve. Finally by the same type of tongue preliminary results are shown dealing with O2 and CO2 concentration measurements in appropriate solutions.
A positive attitude towards provision of end-of-life care may protect against burnout: Burnout and religion in a super-aging society

Aim The aim of our study was to investigate factors associated with burnout of nurses and care workers in nursing homes and geriatric hospitals in Japan. The use of Buddhist priests, the major religion in Japan, was also explored. Methods Questionnaires for nurses and care workers were sent to 10 care facilities. The survey questions included basic demographic information, the Japanese Burnout Index and the Japanese version of the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care Of Dying Scale Form B. They also asked questions about use of Buddhist priests for tasks such as helping to manage the anxiety or distress of patients, families, and staff, or providing sutra chanting. Results In total, 323 questionnaires were returned, of which 260 were used for analysis. Only 18 (6.9%) answered that they had any religious beliefs, which was relatively low compared to 27% from governmental survey data. In total, however, 71% expressed a need for Buddhist priests to help with anxiety or distress among patients. A positive attitude towards providing end-of-life care was a protective factor against depersonalization. It was, however, also related to lower feelings of personal accomplishment. Conclusion Care homes and geriatric hospitals may want to consider calling more on religious resources as a support for staff and patients.
Secret Sharing with Binary Shares

Shamir's celebrated secret sharing scheme provides an efficient method for encoding a secret of arbitrary length $\ell$ among any $N \leq 2^\ell$ players such that for a threshold parameter $t$, (i) the knowledge of any $t$ shares does not reveal any information about the secret and, (ii) any choice of $t+1$ shares fully reveals the secret. It is known that any such threshold secret sharing scheme necessarily requires shares of length $\ell$, and in this sense Shamir's scheme is optimal. The more general notion of ramp schemes requires the reconstruction of secret from any $t+g$ shares, for a positive integer gap parameter $g$. Ramp secret sharing scheme necessarily requires shares of length $\ell/g$. Other than the bound related to secret length $\ell$, the share lengths of ramp schemes can not go below a quantity that depends only on the gap ratio $g/N$. In this work, we study secret sharing in the extremal case of bit-long shares and arbitrarily small gap ratio $g/N$, where standard ramp secret sharing becomes impossible. We show, however, that a slightly relaxed but equally effective notion of semantic security for the secret, and negligible reconstruction error probability, eliminate the impossibility. Moreover, we provide explicit constructions of such schemes. One of the consequences of our relaxation is that, unlike standard ramp schemes with perfect secrecy, adaptive and non-adaptive adversaries need different analysis and construction. For non-adaptive adversaries, we explicitly construct secret sharing schemes that provide secrecy against any $\tau$ fraction of observed shares, and reconstruction from any $\rho$ fraction of shares, for any choices of $0 \leq \tau < \rho \leq 1$. Our construction achieves secret length $N(\rho-\tau-o(1))$, which we show to be optimal. For adaptive adversaries, we construct explicit schemes attaining a secret length $\Omega(N(\rho-\tau))$.
Positive crosstalk between EGFR and the TF-PAR2 pathway mediates resistance to cisplatin and poor survival in cervical cancer

Cisplatin-based chemoradiation is the standard treatment for cervical cancer, but chemosensitizing strategies are needed to improve patient survival. EGFR (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor) is an oncogene overexpressed in cervical cancer that is involved in chemoresistance. Recent studies showed that EGFR upregulates multiple elements of the coagulation cascade, including tissue factor (TF) and the protease-activated receptors (PAR) 1 and 2. Moreover, many G protein-coupled receptors, including PARs, have been implicated in EGFR transactivation. However, the role of coagulation proteins in the progression of cervical cancer has been poorly investigated. Herein we employed cervical cancer cell lines and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to evaluate the role of EGFR, TF and PAR2 in chemoresistance. The SLIGKL-NH2 peptide (PAR2-AP) and coagulation factor VIIa (FVIIa) were used as PAR2 agonists, while cetuximab was used to inhibit EGFR. The more aggressive cell line CASKI showed higher expression levels of EGFR, TF and PAR2 than that of C33A. PAR2 transactivated EGFR, which further upregulated cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) expression. PAR2-AP decreased cisplatin-induced apoptosis through an EGFR- and COX2-dependent mechanism. Furthermore, treatment of CASKI cells with EGF upregulated TF expression, while treatment with cetuximab decreased the TF protein levels. The RNA-seq data from 309 TCGA samples showed a strong positive correlation between EGFR and TF expression (P = 0.0003). In addition, the increased expression of EGFR, PAR2 or COX2 in cervical cancer patients was significantly correlated with poor overall survival. Taken together, our results suggest that EGFR and COX2 are effectors of the TF/FVIIa/PAR2 signaling pathway, promoting chemoresistance.