Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Depth-based Subgraph Convolutional Neural Networks

This paper proposes a new graph convolutional neural architecture based on a depth-based representation of graph structure, called the depth-based subgraph convolutional neural networks (DS-CNNs), which integrates both the global topological and local connectivity structures within a graph. Our idea is to decompose a graph into a family of $K$-layer expansion subgraphs rooted at each vertex, and then a set of convolution filters are designed over these subgraphs to capture local connectivity structural information. Specifically, we commence by establishing a family of $K$-layer expansion subgraphs for each vertex of graph by mapping graph to tree procedures, which can provide global topological arrangement information contained within a graph. We then design a set of fixed-size convolution filters and integrate them with these subgraphs (depicted in Figure 1). The idea is to apply convolution filters sliding over the entire subgraphs of a vertex to extract the local features analogous to the standard convolution operation on grid data. In particular, the convolution operation captures the local structural information within the graph, and has the weight sharing property among different positions of subgraph; the pooling operation acts directly on the output of the preceding layer without any preprocessing scheme (e.g., clustering or other techniques). Experiments on three graph-structured datasets demonstrate that our model DS-CNNs are able to outperform six state-of-the-art methods at the task of node classification.
Comparison of detection methods of EGFR T790M mutations using plasma, serum, and tumor tissue in EGFR-TKI-resistant non-small cell lung cancer

Background Osimertinib, a third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor, exerts remarkable effects against EGFR T790M resistance mutation-positive non-small cell lung cancer. Identifying T790M mutation by re-biopsy is essential before prescribing osimertinib. Tissue biopsy is the golden standard for this purpose, but several factors limit its success rate. The liquid biopsy with blood, using circulating tumor DNA, has been an alternative method. However, the true biological meaning and equivalence of liquid biopsy and tumor biopsy are still under investigation. Especially, the usefulness of serum samples to detect T790M mutation is not yet been known. Patients and methods We prospectively evaluated the sensitivity, specificity, and parallelism of the detection of EGFR mutations in tissue re-biopsy and liquid biopsy (plasma and serum), simultaneously, from June 2016 to May 2017. EGFR mutations in tumor re-biopsy were evaluated by COBAS ver2 and PNA-LNA PCR clamp method, and those in liquid biopsy were evaluated with COBAS ver2. Results Fifteen patients were enrolled. In 10 patients whose EGFR mutation was detected in liquid biopsy, the original EGFR mutation (exon 19 del or L858R) was detected in all patients. Detection of EGFR mutation by COBAS ver2 and by PNA-LNA method was almost the same in tissue re-biopsy. The detection rate of T790M was lower than that of the original EGFR mutation in liquid biopsy compared to that in tissue re-biopsy. The detection of T790M in serum exhibited a higher specificity (67%) and positive predictive value (50%) than that in plasma (50% and 40%, respectively). The detection sensitivity was similar in plasma and serum. Conclusion Plasma, serum, and tissue genotyping can have complementary roles for detecting EGFR-T790M using COBAS ver2. Repeated tests with different samples and different methods may improve accuracy of T790M detection and will lead to the maximum benefit for the patient.
To Concede or to Resist? The Restraining Effect of Military Alliances

Abstract Creating institutions that effectively manage interstate conflict is a priority for policy-makers. In this article we demonstrate that military allies are well positioned to influence the crisis-bargaining behavior of both challengers and targets in ways that often lead to peace. Through a three-player game-theoretic model, we demonstrate that a target's alliances not only have an effect on the demand that the challenger makes, but also on the behavior of the target. When a target values an alliance highly, an ally's recommendation for settlement can encourage the target to concede to demands without further escalation. Our statistical analysis provides evidence in support of the theoretical finding. Allies can both deter challengers and restrain partners, and as a result, can encourage peaceful behavior not only from adversaries, but from member states as well. Our study thus sheds new light on the role of military alliances as potential conflict management devices.
NIME Identity from the Performer's Perspective

The term ‘NIME’ - New Interfaces for Musical Expression - has come to signify both technical and cultural characteristics. Not all new musical instruments are NIMEs, and not all NIMEs are deﬁned as such for the sole ephemeral condition of being new. So, what are the typical characteristics of NIMEs and what are their roles in performers’ practice? Is there a typical NIME repertoire? This paper aims to address these questions with a bottom up approach. We reﬂect on the answers of 78 NIME performers to an on-line questionnaire discussing their performance experience with NIMEs. The results of our investigation explore the role of NIMEs in the performers’ practice and identify the values that are common among performers. We ﬁnd that most NIMEs are viewed as exploratory tools created by and for performers, and that they are constantly in development and almost in no occasions in a ﬁnite state. The ﬁndings of our survey also reﬂect upon virtuosity with NIMEs, whose peculiar performance practice results in learning trajectories that often do not lead to the development of virtuosity as it is commonly understood in traditional performance.
Graphene oxide/polyacrylamide/carboxymethyl cellulose sodium nanocomposite hydrogel with enhanced mechanical strength: preparation, characterization and the swelling behavior

A ternary graphene oxide (GO)/polyacrylamide (PAM)/carboxymethyl cellulose sodium (CMC) nanocomposite hydrogel with improved compressive strength was fabricated through free radical polymerization of AM in the presence of GO and CMC in an aqueous system, followed by ionically crosslinking CMC by aluminium ions. The compressive strength of the ternary hydrogel was dramatically enhanced as compared to that of the pristine PAM/CMC hydrogels with the incorporation of an appropriate amount of 1.6 wt% GO sheets. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) characterization demonstrated that hydrogen bonds formed between the oxygen-containing groups of the GO sheets and the N–H bond of PAM. This strong interaction resulted in the dense structure of the nanocomposite hydrogel and improved mechanical strength. Moreover, the GO content significantly influenced the swelling behaviors of the composite hydrogels. The kinetic study revealed that the swelling behaviors of nanocomposite hydrogels followed the pseudo-second-order dynamic equation. The strategy of combining GO reinforcement with a double network provides an advantageous protocol for the formation of a high-strength hydrogel, which may be used in bioengineering and drug delivery systems.
Extracting interaction effect of cognitive task and unwanted cognitive activity in pre-sleep period

The difficulty of switching off unwanted pre-sleep cognitive activities always causes most people with insomnia unable to fall asleep. Previous studies suggested that manipulating pre-sleep thoughts with cognitive task could change sleep onset latency. The interaction effect of cognitive task and unwanted thoughts is a mixed effect in which each mechanism alone is not completely understood. The present study tries to explore the mixed effect and extract the single effect from it. Seven people with insomnia were investigated and the general cognitive task controlled internally by insomniacs themselves was replaced with an audio task in which the participants have to react distinctively to two different auditory stimuli. The reaction time for which reflected the interaction effect was recorded and then analyzed by the autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation method. A general decline tendency which is called decline effect was observed in the single effect and for most insomniacs the length of the decline effect was around 4 or 5 seconds. In addition, it indicated that such decline effect could be a potential candidate for investing the correlation between cognitive load and interaction effect. Keywords-insomnia; cognitive; autocorrelation; partial autocorrelation
Robustly Complete Reach-and-Stay Control Synthesis for Switched Systems via Interval Analysis

This paper proposes a formal synthesis algorithm for discrete-time switched systems with respect to reach-and-stay specifications. Fundamental to the proposed method is a fixed-point algorithm characterizing the initial states satisfying reach-and-stay specifications for continuous-state systems. Based on the interval branch-and-bound scheme, the original continuous state space is adaptively partitioned into a finite number of cells according to the given specification and system dynamics during the fixed-point iterations. Valid switching modes are recorded and a partition-based switching strategy can be extracted immediately after the algorithm terminates. In contrast with most of the abstraction-based methods, the proposed algorithm is guaranteed to return a switching strategy after a finite number of iterations, provided that the specification is robustly realizable. As illustrated in the numerical example, the adaptive partitioning framework effectively reduces the size of the finite partition, which offers a considerable advantage over abstraction-based methods that use a uniform partition.
Biotransformation of Polychlorinated Dioxins and Microbial Community Dynamics in Sediment Microcosms at Different Contamination Levels

Semi-anaerobic microcosms containing different levels of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) were constructed by seeding with different mass ratios of lake sediment and dioxin-contaminated soil and incubating with organic medium for 1 year. In all microcosms, PCDD/Fs were reduced as a first-order reaction with similar removal rate coefficients, and only trace amounts of less chlorinated congeners were produced as the intermediate and end products. This apparent complete dechlorination of PCDD/Fs seemed to be due to a combination of reductive dechlorination of PCDD/Fs and oxidative degradation of the dechlorinated products. Total cell counting, 16S rRNA gene clone library analyses and quinone profiling showed that the microcosms contained relatively constant total populations with members of the phyla Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria (especially “Deltaproteobacteria”) as the major constituents, independent of pollution levels. Quantitative real-time PCR with a specific primer set showed that the population density of “Dehalococcoides” and its phylogenetic relatives was highly correlated with the concentration of PCDD/Fs present. Some “Dehalococcoides” strains were isolated from the microcosms by repeated enrichment with chloroaromatics as the terminal electron acceptor. However, these isolates did not match with the major “Dehalococcoides”-related clones directly PCR-amplified. The results of this study suggest that PCDD/Fs in natural environments under given conditions are transformed with similar half-reduction rates independent of their concentrations, and a wide variety of “Dehalococcoides”-related bacteria play the primary role in this process.
Molecular Identification of Forensically Important Indian Species of FleshFlies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) by Using COI Gene of Mitochondrial DNA

Identification of the fauna collected from and around the corpse is an absolutely vital prerequisite for the estimation of post mortem interval(PMI) in the field of forensic entomology. Morphological identification of flesh flies (Diptera; Sarcophagidae) can be perplexing due similar attributes of the species. So, to simplify the identification method, amplification of cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene is often tried. We illustrate the use of 450 bp fragment of COI gene for differentiation of ten forensically significant species of flesh flies in India. The outcome displays the robustness of COI gene as a diagnostic marker, since its nucleotide variability endows reliable distinction to be drawn between species. Four new COI gene sequences have been added to GenBank which may be of interest for correct species identification for future workers.
A polyphonic pitch tracking embedded system for rapid instrument augmentation

This paper presents a system for easily augmenting polyphonic pitched instruments. The entire system is designed to run on a low-cost embedded computer, suitable for live performance and easy to customise for different use cases. The core of the system implements real-time spectrum factorisation, decomposing polyphonic audio input signals into music note activations. New instruments can be easily added to the system with the help of custom spectral template dictionaries. Instrument augmentation is achieved by replacing or mixing the instrument’s original sounds with a large variety of synthetic or sampled sounds, which follow the polyphonic pitch activations.
Incorporating Power Transmission Bottlenecks into Aggregated Energy System Models

Energy scenario analyses are able to provide insights into the future and possible strategies for coping with challenges such as the integration of renewable energy sources. The models used for analyzing and developing future energy systems must be simplified, e.g., due to computational constraints. Therefore, grid-related effects and regional differences are often ignored. We tackle this issue by presenting a new methodology for aggregating spatially highly resolved transmission grid information for energy system models. In particular, such approaches are required in studies that evaluate the demand for spatially balancing power generation and consumption in future energy systems. Electricity transmission between regions is crucial, especially for scenarios that rely on high shares of renewable energy sources. The presented methodology estimates transmission line congestions by evaluating the nodal price differences and then applies a spectral clustering on these particular link attributes. The objective of the proposed approach is to derive aggregated model instances that preserve information regarding electricity transmission bottlenecks. The resulting models are evaluated against observables such as the annual amount of redispatched power generation. For a selection of defined performance indicators, we find a significantly higher accuracy compared to the commonly used, spatially aggregated models applied in the field of energy scenario analysis.
Sodium Oxybatefor Narcolepsy with CataplexyâA Cost-Effective Analysis

Objective: To assess the cost-effectiveness of sodium oxybate plus antidepressants and stimulants compared with the current standard treatment for narcolepsy with cataplexy in the UK. Methods: We developed a Markov model to assess the costs and benefits of sodium oxybate plus antidepressants and stimulants or current standard treatment based on their effects on the quality of life of patients. The main outcome was the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) in terms of costs per additional qualityadjusted life year (QALY) gained over 5 years of treatment. One-way, multi-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted to explore the impact of uncertainties on the findings. Results: The cost-effectiveness of sodium oxybate plus antidepressants and stimulants were very sensitive to the costs of sodium oxybate (price and dose) and differences in utilities between responders and non-responders. With current clinical evidence, it is recognised that measure of improvement in utilities used in the current model may be an underestimation of the reality. Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that, at the current UK list price, sodium oxybate would not represent good value for money for the NHS. This is unfortunate, since it appears that sodium oxybate is likely to benefit some patients in the management of these two conditions which affect about 0.03% of the UK population.
Productivity Measurement and R & D Assets

A key feature of the 2008 revision of the System of National was the treatment of R&D expenditure as investment. Measures of R&D capital can now be used in productivity computations and the question arises whether the standard approach towards accounting for their growth contribution is justified given their special nature: R&D assets provide capital services by affecting the working of other inputs as a whole akin to technical change. We model R&D inputs with a restricted cost function and compare econometric estimates of R&D cost elasticities for 20 OECD countries with those derived under a standard index number approach but find no significant differences. However we cannot reject the hypothesis of increasing returns to scale. We de-compose the standard MFP growth into a scale effect and a residual productivity effect, each of which explains about half of overall MFP change. We also compute mark-up rates of prices over marginal cost and find widespread evidence of rising mark-ups for the period 1985-2015. ∗Paper presented at the World KLEMS Conference at Harvard University May 2018. Opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or its Members
EFFICIENT AUTOMATED DIGITAL AERIAL TRIANGULATION THROUGH CUSTOMISATION OF A COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAMMETRIC SYSTEM

Aerotriangulation is one of the key processes in digital photogrammetric production which has the highest potential for automation and efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a customised and modified approach to aerial triangulation using the Helava Automated Triangulation System (HATS) as the basic triangulation measurement tool. This presented approach is currently in use at Swissphoto Vermessung AG, former swissair Photo+Surveys Ltd., for the aerial triangulation of the swissphoto block with more than 7000 images covering the entire area of Switzerland. The highly automated and efficient digital aerotriangulation (AT) approach and results of four Swiss photogrammetric triangulation blocks are presented in this paper. The four blocks used vary between 150 and 270 images (photo scale 1: 27’000) and each block represents different terrain characteristics. All measurements were carried out in greyscale images with a resolution of 25 micron on the Helava/Leica Digital Photogrammetric Workstation DPW670 using a very dense tie point pattern. The observations were later adjusted in the GPS supported bundle adjustment program BLUH using self-calibration. The RMS of the control points was about 0.5 m in planimetry and about 1m in height, while the RMS values of the GPS station co-ordinates were better than 0.5 m in planimetry and 0.2 m in height. With this introduced customised triangulation approach the used time for triangulation is up to 8 minutes per photo, if only the operator-intensive work is summarised, while computation time of the computer, which is mostly done overnight, is neglected. The aspects of terrain characteristics with respect to triangulation performance will be also discussed in this paper.
Mundluru, T., Almukhtar, A., Ju, X. and Ayoub, A. (2017) The accuracy of three-dimensional prediction of soft tissue changes following the surgical correction of facial asymmetry: an innovative concept. International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 46(11), pp. 1517-

The accuracy of three dimensional predictions of soft tissue changes following surgical correction of facial asymmetry has been evaluated in this study. The preoperative (T1) and 6-12 months postoperative (T2) CBCT scans of 13 patients were studied. All patients had surgical correction for facial asymmetry as part of the multidisciplinary treatment protocol. The magnitude of surgical movement was measured; virtual surgery was carried out on the preoperative scans using Maxilim software. The predicted soft tissue changes were compared to the actual postoperative appearance (T2) at specific anatomic facial regions. Mean (signed) distances and the mean (absolute) distances between the predicted and actual 3D surface meshes for each region were calculated. One sample Student t-test was applied. Additionally, a novel directional soft tissue analysis was applied to analyse the accuracy of the prediction of soft tissue. The results showed that the distances between the predicted and actual postoperative soft tissue changes were within 2.0mm (p<0.05) at all regions. The predicted facial morphology was narrower than the actual surgical changes at the cheek regions. Three dimensional soft tissue prediction for the correction of asymmetric cases is clinically acceptable using Maxilim software.
Using color to understand perceived lightness University of Sydney , Australia

We report a series of experiments that employed chromatic variants of lightness illusions in an attempt to gain theoretical leverage into the types of computations that are responsible for the illusions. Two types of displays were used: one that elicits a strong percept of transparency and one that does not. We compared the pattern of induction observed in chromatic and achromatic variants of both display types. We found that the pattern of induction observed in the display that evoked a strong percept of transparency generated similar patterns of induction in both the chromatic and achromatic variants of the display, suggesting that layered image representations (scission) may be responsible for the induction observed in this display. In contradistinction, we found that the chromatic and achromatic variants of the checkerboard–gradient pattern did not consistently generate the same patterns of induction, suggesting that there are patterns of induction that only arise from luminance modulations in some class of displays. The impact of these results on existing models of lightness is discussed. We suggest that the comparison of chromatic and achromatic induction can provide insights into the computations that are responsible for the role of context in modulating perceived lightness and color.