Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Machine Learning to Augment Collaborative Filtering of Community Discussions ( Extended Abstract )

Collaborative filtering systems have been developed to manage information overload in online communities. In these systems, users rank content provided by other users on the validity or usefulness within their particular context. Slashdot is an example of such a community where peers rate each others’ comments based on their relevance to the post. This work extracts a wide variety of features from the Slashdot metadata and posts’ linguistic contents to identify features that can predict the community rating. We find that author reputation, use of pronouns, and author sentiment are salient. We achieve 76% accuracy at predicting the community’s rating of the post as good, neutral, or bad.
A Method for Blind Identification of Single User MIMO Signal in Step by Step

This paper constructed signal models of four types of signal in wireless communication, i.e. single user MIMO signal, single user single antenna signal, virtual MIMO signal and multibeam smart antenna signal first, and then proposed a method for blind identification of single user MIMO signal in step by step in noncooperation communication, when the unknown source was one of the four types by using MUSIC algorithm and forward-backward spatial smoothing algorithm to blindly estimate DOAs of the received signal in the first two steps, and use blind channel estimation in the third step. Simulation results show the feasibility of this method. There has not been any published literature reporting research results about this topic yet, so the results of this paper is of important value in both theory and application.
PIXS: programmable intelligence for cross-platform socialization

With the proliferation of the emerging Online Social Networks and other conventional communication services, there is an increasing need for a tool which can facilitate individual users to effectively socialize across multiple, heterogeneous platforms. While the diverse nature of the heterogeneous services already makes the design of a cross-platform socialization tool challenging, an even more daunting task is to tackle the "noisy" nature of the Social Networking Services (SNS). Existing solutions all lack flexibility and extensibility, especially in supporting advanced users to better manage their cross-platform socialization via customized information processing. In this paper, we propose PIXS (Programmable Intelligence for Cross-platform Socialization) -- an open-source, extensible middleware which provides efficient information acquisition and dissemination across heterogeneous SNSs. A distinguishing feature of PIXS is its support of script-based operations. As a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of PIXS, we have developed for it a Python-based semi-supervised learning application which can prioritize incoming messages from different platforms via a Rank Preserving Regression (RPR) framework. This framework can readily incorporate the domain knowledge of the end user. Our SGD-based approach also enables adaptive and incremental training of the ranking system according to the gradual evolution of the user preference. Performance evaluation based on real message traces shows that the proposed system can boost the user's efficiency in identifying and forwarding important messages across heterogeneous SNS platforms. Additional use-cases of PIXS are also discussed.
Counterfeit Medications and Fentanyl.

The steep recent increase in overdose deaths and near-deaths nationwide involving fentanyl signals a new chapter in the epidemic of opioid use. Throughout the United States and Canada, seizures of pill presses, large quantities of active pharmaceutical ingredient in powder form, and counterfeit pills have been reported. Since fall 2013, the highly potent opioid fentanyl and its analogues have contributed to more than 5000 overdose deaths in the United States. In 2014, one-fifth of Ohio’s overdoses were associated with fentanyl; in 2015, two-thirds of New Hampshire’s fatal overdoses and half of Rhode Island’s overdoses were associated with fentanyl. The research letter by Arens et al1 in this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine reports a case series of counterfeit Xanax (alprazolam) tablets containing fentanyl and etizolam detected by poison control and emergency medical professionals in San Francisco, California. The authors should be commended for identifying and warning the public, to prevent further harm occurring as a result of the supply of this counterfeit medication. Language: en
Alpaca: Compact Network Policies With Attribute-Encoded Addresses

In enterprise networks, policies (e.g., QoS or security) are often defined based on the categorization of hosts along dimensions, such as the organizational role of the host (faculty versus student) and department (engineering versus sales). While current best practices (virtual local area networks) help when hosts are categorized along a single dimension, policy may often need to be expressed along multiple orthogonal dimensions. In this paper, we make three contributions. First, we argue for attribute-encoded IPs (ACIPs), where the IP address allocation process in enterprises considers attributes of a host along all policy dimensions. ACIPs enable flexible policy specification in a manner that may not otherwise be feasible owing to the limited size of switch rule-tables. Second, we present Alpaca, algorithms for realizing ACIPs under practical constraints of limited-length IP addresses. Our algorithms can be applied to different switch architectures, and we provide bounds on their performance. Third, we demonstrate the importance and viability of ACIPs on data collected from real campus networks.
Prognostic use of circulating plasma nucleic acid concentrations in patients with acute stroke.

BACKGROUND At present there is no simple, accurate blood test that may be used to determine the severity of stroke or to predict mortality and morbidity in stroke patients presenting to emergency departments. METHODS Patients with stroke-like symptoms who presented to an emergency department of a university hospital in Hong Kong were recruited for the study. DNA extracted from patients' plasma was analyzed for the beta-globin gene with a fluorescent-based PCR test. The primary outcome measures were in-hospital and 6-month mortality and morbidity using the post-stroke modified Rankin Score. RESULTS Among the 88 consecutive patients recruited to the study, 70 (80%) had ischemic stroke, 11 (13%) had intracerebral hemorrhage, and 7 (8%) had transient ischemic attacks. Median plasma DNA concentrations taken within 3 h of symptom onset were higher in patients who died compared with those who survived at discharge (6205 vs 1334 kilogenome-equivalents/L; P = 0.03). Among patients with NIH Stroke Scale scores >8, median plasma DNA concentrations were higher in patients who died compared with those who survived to 6 months (2273 vs 968 kilogenome-equivalents/L; P = 0.002). Plasma DNA concentrations correlated with the volume of cerebral hematoma (r = 0.66; P = 0.03). Plasma DNA concentrations >1400 kilogenome-equivalents/L had a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 74.4% for predicting hospital mortality after stroke, and the area under the ROC curve was 0.89 (95% confidence interval, 0.80-0.94). The adjusted odds ratio for plasma DNA concentrations predicting 6-month mortality was 1.6 (1.1-2.4; P = 0.03) and for predicting 6-month post-Rankin Score >2 was 1.8 (1.0-3.3; P = 0.05). CONCLUSION Plasma DNA concentrations correlate with stroke severity and may be used to predict mortality and morbidity in the emergency room.
Vitamin and antioxidant supplementation: critical evaluation of clinical outcomes.

The systemic inflammatory response is a critical component of the innate immune system in man that develops in a stereotypical manner to injury, inflammation, and infection. This enormously complex set of actions, reactions, and interactions develops in large measure, when cells of the monocyte/macrophage lineage are activated by a wide variety of stimuli including endotoxin, microorganisms, antigen-antibody complexes, burn injury, trauma, cancer and many other acute and chronic diseases, to release the two principal, proximal cytokines, interleukin (IL)-1 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF), both of which stimulate the production of a third, pivotal cytokine, IL-6. Working in a cascade fashion these mediators activate many of the body systems including the immune, metabolic, hematopoietic, and cardiorespiratory systems via a number of second messengers to produce fever, tachycardia, tachypnea, hypercoagulability, fibrinolysis, as well as a plethora of other effects, but particularly leukocytosis and activation of bactericidal activity through enhanced production of reactive oxygen species. There are as well a wide variety of metabolic effects including enhanced glucose production, accelerated skeletal protein breakdown with increased net protein synthesis in visceral organs like the liver and bone marrow that lead to production of larger numbers of immune cells and acute phase proteins, and increases in resting energy expenditure. This systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) is clinically identified by generally agreed upon characteristics of increases in heart rate (>90 beats/min), rises or falls in body temperature (<36 or >38◦C), changes in respiratory rate or arterial oxygen concentration when breathing room air
HERWIG 6.5: an event generator for Hadron Emission Reactions With Interfering Gluons (including supersymmetric processes)

HERWIG is a general-purpose Monte Carlo event generator, which includes the simulation of hard lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron scattering and soft hadron-hadron collisions in one package. It uses the parton-shower approach for initialand final-state QCD radiation, including colour coherence effects and azimuthal correlations both within and between jets. This article updates the description of HERWIG published in 1992, emphasising the new features incorporated since then. These include, in particular, the matching of first-order matrix elements with parton showers, a more correct treatment of heavy quark decays, and a wide range of new processes, including many predicted by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, with the option of R-parity violation. At the same time we offer a brief review of the physics underlying HERWIG, together with details of the input and control parameters and the output data, to provide a self-contained guide for prospective users of the program.
Toward Design Decisions to Enable Deployability: Empirical Study of Three Projects Reaching for the Continuous Delivery Holy Grail

There is growing interest in continuous delivery practices to enable rapid and reliable deployment. While practices are important, we suggest architectural design decisions are equally important for projects to achieve goals such continuous integration (CI) build, automated testing and reduced deployment-cycle time. Architectural design decisions that conflict with deploy ability goals can impede the team's ability to achieve the desired state of deployment and may result in substantial technical debt. To explore this assertion, we interviewed three project teams striving to practicing continuous delivery. In this paper, we summarize examples of the deploy ability goals for each project as well as the architectural decisions that they have made to enable deploy ability. We present the deploy ability goals, design decisions, and deploy ability tactics collected and summarize the design tactics derived from the interviews in the form of an initial draft version hierarchical deploy ability tactic tree.
[Takayasu arteritis].

INTRODUCTION Giovanni Battista Mlorgani reported the first case with Takayasu arteritis (TA) in 1761. The disease affects the aortic arch and large blood vessels. It is found in every race and in every age-group, predominantly in female population aged 20-40 years. There are four types of TA: type I affects blood vessels of aortic arch: Type II is syndrome of middle aorta (thoracal and abdominal aorta); Type III affects aortic arch and abdominal aorta; Type IV affects pulmonary artery. CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS TA has three phases: 1. weakness, fever, anemia, loss of appetite: 2. inflammation of blood vessels; 3. symptoms of stenosis and occlusive lesions. Pathoanatomical disorder includes inflammation of all three layers of blood vessels. CASE REPORT This is a case report of a 41-year-old woman with TA. She suffered from chest pain, fatigue and pain in both legs, predominatly in the right. Clinical presentation of the disease varies whereas development of TA is unpredictable. Angiography is an important method in diagnosis of the disease and in planning surgical treatment. In our patient five arterial stenoses were established by angiography. ECHO Color Doppler angiography may be useful. Diagnostic criteria include: age under 40 years, occlusion of the right and left subclavian artery and nine minor criteria. Corticosteroid and antiinflammatory therapy is indicated. One third of patients needs surgery. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In our opinion surgical treatment should be delayed until acute phase is over. Surgical treatment in our patient included: aortobifemoral bypass and left carotid-axillary bypass grafting. Some patients need multiple surgical treatments, like our patient. They also need post-surgical controls.
Estimation of the current global burden of cryptococcal meningitis among persons living with HIV/AIDS

Objective:Cryptococcal meningitis is one of the most important HIV-related opportunistic infections, especially in the developing world. In order to help develop global strategies and priorities for prevention and treatment, it is important to estimate the burden of cryptococcal meningitis. Design:Global burden of disease estimation using published studies. Methods:We used the median incidence rate of available studies in a geographic region to estimate the region-specific cryptococcal meningitis incidence; this was multiplied by the 2007 United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS HIV population estimate for each region to estimate cryptococcal meningitis cases. To estimate deaths, we assumed a 9% 3-month case-fatality rate among high-income regions, a 55% rate among low-income and middle-income regions, and a 70% rate in sub-Saharan Africa, based on studies published in these areas and expert opinion. Results:Published incidence ranged from 0.04 to 12% per year among persons with HIV. Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest yearly burden estimate (median incidence 3.2%, 720 000 cases; range, 144 000–1.3 million). Median incidence was lowest in Western and Central Europe and Oceania (≤0.1% each). Globally, approximately 957 900 cases (range, 371 700–1 544 000) of cryptococcal meningitis occur each year, resulting in 624 700 deaths (range, 125 000–1 124 900) by 3 months after infection. Conclusion:This study, the first attempt to estimate the global burden of cryptococcal meningitis, finds the number of cases and deaths to be very high, with most occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. Further work is needed to better define the scope of the problem and track the epidemiology of this infection, in order to prioritize prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies.
Sense codon emancipation for proteome-wide incorporation of noncanonical amino acids: rare isoleucine codon AUA as a target for genetic code expansion

One of the major challenges in contemporary synthetic biology is to find a route to engineer synthetic organisms with altered chemical constitution. In terms of core reaction types, nature uses an astonishingly limited repertoire of chemistries when compared with the exceptionally rich and diverse methods of organic chemistry. In this context, the most promising route to change and expand the fundamental chemistry of life is the inclusion of amino acid building blocks beyond the canonical 20 (i.e. expanding the genetic code). This strategy would allow the transfer of numerous chemical functionalities and reactions from the synthetic laboratory into the cellular environment. Due to limitations in terms of both efficiency and practical applicability, state-of-the-art nonsense suppression- or frameshift suppression-based methods are less suitable for such engineering. Consequently, we set out to achieve this goal by sense codon emancipation, that is, liberation from its natural decoding function – a prerequisite for the reassignment of degenerate sense codons to a new 21st amino acid. We have achieved this by redesigning of several features of the post-transcriptional modification machinery which are directly involved in the decoding process. In particular, we report first steps towards the reassignment of 5797 AUA isoleucine codons in Escherichia coli using efficient tools for tRNA nucleotide modification pathway engineering.
A Remarkable Fission Yeast, Schizosaccharomyces versatilis NOV. SP

During a visit in Mlichigan in December, 1942, the attention of the senior author was called to some home-canned grape juice which was uindergoing fermentation. The juice was under considerable gas pressure, but the flavor, though considerably altered and alcoholic, had not suffered. The taste suggested that the activity might be due to a species of Saccharomyces or Zygosaccharomyces. A sample of the beverage was placed in a sterile bottle and brought back to the Northern Regional Research Laboratory, where it was streaked on a glucose agar plate and incubated at room temperature. Colonies began to develop slowly after several days. These possessed a smooth, glistening, white surface and, when widely separated, were surrounded by a dense zone of hyphae that girew downward into the agar. Microscopic examination showed all colonies to consist of large yeast cells, which reproduced asexually by fission exclusively, and sexually by copulation followed by the formation of asci with eight ascospores. The mode of ascospore formation was entirely suggestive of the genus Schizosaccharomyces. The formation of hyphae, however, was strongly suggestive of the genus Endomyces. Because of the many outstanding characteristics possessed by this yeast, and because no record of it has been found in the literature, wNre have deemed it desirable to describe the form as a new species and have chosen the name Schizosaccharomyces versatilis nov. sp.
[Interactions between radiation and hormonal therapy in breast cancer: simultaneous or sequential treatment].

BACKGROUND Combining radiation and hormone therapy (administration of selective estrogen receptor modulators) has become common clinical practice in recent years for receptor positive breast cancer. Little is known about a possible interaction of both treatment modalities if they are given simultaneously. Tamoxifen (antiestrogen molecule, triphenylethylene derivative) may theoretically render cancer cells less responsive to radiotherapy arresting hormone-receptor-positive cells in G0/G1 phase and increase the risk of breast and lung fibrosis stimulating the secretion of transforming growth factor beta in human fibroblasts. PURPOSE This article reviews the published data to assess the impact of sequencing of hormonal and radiation therapy on outcomes in breast cancer. METHODS Computerised searches for publications debating the sequencing of hormonal therapy relative to radiation therapy were done using MEDLINE data. RESULTS Results of tamoxifen experiments with cell culture regarding radioprotection of tumour clonogens are conflicting. In contrast to in vitro results, in animal studies no protective effect of tamoxifen was observed. In one in vitro study, letrozole (non-steroid selective aromatase inhibitor) had a radiosensitizing effect on breast-cancer lines. No randomised clinical trials to date have studied sequencing of tamoxifen or other selective estrogen receptor modulators and radiotherapy. Results from retrospective clinical studies which included treatment arms with and without tamoxifen showed reduction in tumour recurrence with tamoxifen. Some of these studies have noted increased risk of lung and breast fibrosis with tamoxifen with radiotherapy. Results of three articles examined the effect of tamoxifen sequence showed no adverse effect on local control or survival in sequential versus concurrent tamoxifen and radiation patients. One of the three studies also assessed the risk of complications with respect to the timing of tamoxifen with radiotherapy. There was no difference in the rates of complications between the two groups. The association of radiation and selective aromatase inhibitors or aromatase inactivators has not been addressed in clinical studies. CONCLUSIONS Combined application of tamoxifen and radiotherapy improves survival and local control in breast cancer. Available clinical studies do not indicate that the simultaneous application of tamoxifen and radiotherapy is disadvantageous, as was suggested by some of the in vitro studies. The risk of subcutaneous breast and lung fibrosis might be slightly increased if tamoxifen is given simultaneously with radiotherapy. Both treatment modalities should be started early after surgery. There is no sufficient evidence to withhold tamoxifen administration during irradiation of breast cancer. The issue of optimal sequencing of hormonal and radiotherapy should be addressed in randomised clinical trials.
Effect of incorrect mix ratio on strength of two component adhesive Butt-Joints tested at elevated temperature

The aim of this study was to determine the impact of the incorrect mix ratio on the strength of joints bonded with a commercial epoxy adhesive compo-sition. The performance of cold-cured as well as accelerated cured butt joints was monitored at elevated temperature conditions. The obtained data was subjected to statistical analysis to show the correlation between joint strength at high temperature and incorrect mix ratio. The degradation of adhesive material properties with increase of hardener ratio in adhesive material was observed, as well as the change in failure type from mixed type to clearly cohesive (for inadequate volume of harde-ner) or adhesive (for excessive amount of hardener). Surprisingly insufficiency of hardener doesn’t affect the strength of joint in such manner. General recommend-dation were drawn for the preparation of two-component epoxy adhesives for joints to be used in elevated temperature, particularly when uncertainty regarding the correct resin/hardener mix ratio and future research was planned.
Electrochemical Reduction of TiOx at Room Temperature in Ionic Liquids

The reduction of titanium oxide was achieved in ionic conducting electrolytes on oxidized titanium foils and on titanium oxide particles in a packed bed electrode configuration. The surface of a titanium foil oxidized in air at 550C for 140 hrs was studied with cyclic voltammetry. The voltammetry showed a series o f shallow waves in the negative potential region corresponding to reduction reactions occurring on the surface oxide. Changes observed in subsequent cycles clearly indicated that the oxide had undergone significant changes. To establish that titanium metal was obtained an experiment was run using TiC>2 particles in a packed bed configuration where no titanium metal was available to give false analytical signals. After the particles were exposed to conditions which were determined, from the voltammograms on the oxidized Ti foil, to lead to metallic titanium the particles were examined with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to determine the presence o f elemental titanium metal. A 20% conversion to elemental titanium was observed. Further experiments were carried out on the oxidation/reduction behavior o f Ti+3 and Ti*4 ions in the ionically conducting electrolytes.