Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Objectives and State-of-the-Art of Location-Based Social Network Recommender Systems

Because of the widespread adoption of GPS-enabled devices, such as smartphones and GPS navigation devices, more and more location information is being collected and available. Compared with traditional ones (e.g., Amazon, Taobao, and Dangdang), recommender systems built on location-based social networks (LBSNs) have received much attention. The former mine users’ preferences through the relationship between users and items, e.g., online commodity, movies and music. The latter add location information as a new dimension to the former, hence resulting in a three-dimensional relationship among users, locations, and activities. In this article, we summarize LBSN recommender systems from the perspective of such a relationship. User, activity, and location are called objects, and recommender objectives are formed and achieved by mining and using such 3D relationships. From the perspective of the 3D relationship among these objects, we summarize the state-of-the-art of LBSN recommender systems to fulfill the related objectives. We finally indicate some future research directions in this area.
Natural protein fibers

Alpha keratin fibers (hairs, wools, quills, and other mammalian appendages) together with fibroin fibers such as silks and spiders webs are all highly extensible fibrous proteins for which the mechanical properties are of primary importance both to the animal from which they originate and their ultimate application by man. Similarly, the collagens are highly inextensible fibrous proteins, which form the major component of mammalian skin and connecting structures such as tendons. All these fibrous proteins are biological polymers of polypeptide chains for which the mechanical and allied physical properties, such as water absorption, relate to both their macrostructure and their molecular and near-molecular structure. Because of both their commercial application and their relatively complex structure at the molecular and near-molecular level, interpretation of the physical properties of α-keratin fibers represents the main component of this presentation. The mechanical properties of α-keratin fibers are primarily related to the two components of the elongated cortical cells, the highly ordered intermediate filaments (microfibrils) which contain the α-helices, and the matrix in which the intermediate filaments are embedded. The matrix consists of globular proteins plus water, the content of the latter being dependent on the fibers environment. The Extended Two-Phase Model (ETPM) has been developed and results in a detailed coverage of the bulk mechanical properties of α-helical fibers in terms of their known molecular and near-molecular structure. The inextensible protein fibers, the collagens and fibroins, are also briefly discussed in terms of the relationship between mechanical properties and the structure of these fibers.
Racial differences on association of depressive symptoms with combined basic and instrumental activities of daily living.

BACKGROUND Depressive symptoms are predictive of multiple degenerative diseases in older age adults. However, the association of depressive symptoms with onset and progression of disability have not been studied. METHODS In a cohort of community-dwelling, older black and white adults, 5,446 initially nondisabled subjects were followed annually for disability between 2000 and 2008. Depressive symptoms were assessed at baseline using a summary measure of 10-item version of the Center for Epidemiologic Survey-Depressive symptoms scale. The disability outcome was based on a summary measure of 13 basic and instrumental activities of daily living, and analyzed using a two-part regression model for onset and progression of disability. RESULTS During follow-up, 44% of blacks and 35% of whites reported onset of disability. After adjusting for confounders, depressive symptoms were associated with increased odds of disability onset in blacks (odds ratio = 1.12, 95% confidence interval, 1.07-1.18) and whites (odds ratio = 1.21, 95% confidence interval, 1.08-1.36). The odds of disability onset associated with depressive symptoms also increased significantly over time in whites (odds ratio = 1.06, 95% confidence interval, 1.04-1.09), but not in blacks. In addition, depressive symptoms were associated with an increasing rate of progression of disability in whites (rate ratio = 1.08, 95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.09), but not in blacks. CONCLUSIONS Depressive symptoms increased the risk of onset of disability in blacks and whites. This risk tended to increase over time only among whites. A similar race-specific pattern was observed for time-dependent changes due to depressive symptoms in the rate of progression in disability after onset.
The fallacy of intimacy: Sexual risk behaviour and beliefs about trust and condom use among men who have sex with men in South Africa

The objective of this study is to assess (1) whether beliefs about trust and condom use affect sexual risk behaviour, and (2) if beliefs about trust and condom use impact sexual risk behaviour directly or if this relationship is mediated by other determinants. The Information-Motivation-Behavioural Skills model was used as a framework for the mediation analysis. A diverse cohort of three hundred 18–40 year old men who have sex with men (MSM) residing in Pretoria, South Africa, were recruited and surveyed for this project. Findings indicate that men who report a high frequency of past unprotected anal intercourse are more likely to believe that it is not necessary to use condoms with a trusted or steady partner regardless of their current partnership status. This fallacy of intimacy appears to affect sexual risk behaviour through intentions and attitudes regarding safer sex practices. Based on these findings, we recommend that more attention be given in gaining a better understanding of how beliefs about trust and condom use are formed and how they can be changed among MSM in South Africa.
Cross-Bucket Generalization for Information and Privacy Preservation

Generalization is an effective technique for protecting confidential information of individuals, and has been studied by proposing numerous algorithms. However, the previous works do not separate the protection against identity disclosure and sensitive disclosure. Thus, when the requirement of attribute protection is higher than that of identity protection, generalization for <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="zhang-ieq1-2773069.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>-diversity causes overprotection for identity and large mounts of information utility loss. This paper presents a novel approach, called cross-bucket generalization, as a solution to meet the problem. The rationale is to divide microdata into equivalence groups and buckets. First, it provides separate protection for identity and sensitive values, and the level of protection can be flexibly adjusted based on actual demands. Second, the sizes of equivalence groups and buckets are minimized as far as possible by only satisfying the protection requirements, which avoid the overprotection for identity and reduce information loss. The experiments we conducted illustrate the effectiveness of our solution.
Visual Vehicle Tracking Based on Deep Representation and Semisupervised Learning

Discriminative tracking methods use binary classification to discriminate between the foreground and background and have achieved some useful results. However, the use of labeled training samples is insufficient for them to achieve accurate tracking. Hence, discriminative classifiers must use their own classification results to update themselves, which may lead to feedback-induced tracking drift. To overcome these problems, we propose a semisupervised tracking algorithm that uses deep representation and transfer learning. Firstly, a 2D multilayer deep belief network is trained with a large amount of unlabeled samples. The nonlinear mapping point at the top of this network is subtracted as the feature dictionary. Then, this feature dictionary is utilized to transfer train and update a deep tracker. The positive samples for training are the tracked vehicles, and the negative samples are the background images. Finally, a particle filter is used to estimate vehicle position. We demonstrate experimentally that our proposed vehicle tracking algorithm can effectively restrain drift while also maintaining the adaption of vehicle appearance. Compared with similar algorithms, our method achieves a better tracking success rate and fewer average central-pixel errors.
Programmed death 1 is highly expressed on CD8+ CD57+ T cells in patients with stable multiple sclerosis and inhibits their cytotoxic response to Epstein–Barr virus

Growing evidence points to a deregulated response to Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) in the central nervous system of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) as a possible cause of disease. We have investigated the response of a subpopulation of effector CD8+ T cells to EBV in 36 healthy donors and in 35 patients with MS in active and inactive disease. We have measured the expression of markers of degranulation, the release of cytokines, cytotoxicity and the regulation of effector functions by inhibitory receptors, such as programmed death 1 (PD‐1) and human inhibitor receptor immunoglobulin‐like transcript 2 (ILT2). We demonstrate that polyfunctional cytotoxic CD8+ CD57+ T cells are able to kill EBV‐infected cells in healthy donors. In contrast, an anergic exhaustion‐like phenotype of CD8+ CD57+ T cells with high expression of PD‐1 was observed in inactive patients with MS compared with active patients with MS or healthy donors. Detection of CD8+ CD57+ T cells in meningeal inflammatory infiltrates from post‐mortem MS tissue confirmed the association of this cell phenotype with the disease pathological process. The overall results suggest that ineffective immune control of EBV in patietns with MS during remission may be one factor preceding and enabling the reactivation of the virus in the central nervous system and may cause exacerbation of the disease.
Design of a High-Performance GEMM-like Tensor–Tensor Multiplication

We present “GEMM-like Tensor–Tensor multiplication” (GETT), a novel approach for dense tensor contractions that mirrors the design of a high-performance general matrix–matrix multiplication (GEMM). The critical insight behind GETT is the identification of three index sets, involved in the tensor contraction, which enable us to systematically reduce an arbitrary tensor contraction to loops around a highly tuned “macro-kernel. ” This macro-kernel operates on suitably prepared (“packed”) sub-tensors that reside in a specified level of the cache hierarchy. In contrast to previous approaches to tensor contractions, GETT exhibits desirable features such as unit-stride memory accesses, cache-awareness, as well as full vectorization, without requiring auxiliary memory. We integrate GETT alongside the so-called Transpose–Transpose-GEMM-Transpose and Loops-over-GEMM approaches into an open source “Tensor Contraction Code Generator. ” The performance results for a wide range of tensor contractions suggest that GETT has the potential of becoming the method of choice: While GETT exhibits excellent performance across the board, its effectiveness for bandwidth-bound tensor contractions is especially impressive, outperforming existing approaches by up to 12.4×. More precisely, GETT achieves speedups of up to 1.41× over an equivalent-sized GEMM for bandwidth-bound tensor contractions while attaining up to 91.3% of peak floating-point performance for compute-bound tensor contractions.
Multi-objective Optimization Algorithm Based on BBO for Virtual Machine Consolidation Problem

Cloud computing is a promising technology having ability to influence the way of the provision of computing and storage resources through virtual machine (VM). VM Consolidation is an efficient way to improve power efficiency and quality guarantee for on-demand services. However, it is an integer programming problem and as well as a NP-hard problem to find optimal solutions within polynomial time. In this paper, the VM consolidation problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, which has three conflicting objectives, i.e., reducing power consumption, achieving good load balancing and shortening VM migration time. We propose a multi-objective optimization algorithm based on biogeography-based optimization (BBO) for the VM consolidation problem, which is named as MBBO/DE: Multi-objective Biogeography-Based Optimization algorithm hybrid with Differential Evolution. It utilizes cosine migration model, differential strategies and Gaussian mutation model to improve the quality of habitats and the ability of finding optimal solutions. Experiments have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of MBBO/DE using synthetic and real-world instances. Experimental results show that MBBO/DE obtains a better performance while simultaneously reducing power consumption and achieving good load balancing within a satisfactory time as compared to genetic algorithm (GA), differential evolution (DE), ant colony optimization (ACO) and BBO.
Channel estimation with scattered pilots in GFDM with multiple subcarrier bandwidths

This paper proposes a channel estimation scheme with scattered pilots in generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) with multiple subcarrier bandwidths. In the proposed scheme, the pilot symbols are assigned to narrow bandwidth subcarriers. Thus, it is possible to avoid inter-subsymbol interference that is inevitable in GFDM with unified bandwidth subcarriers. On a GSM-TU channel, the mean square error (MSE) of the proposed GFDM is equivalent to that of the OFDM and bit error rate (BER) performance for QPSK symbols is about 1dB better than that of the conventional GFDM at a BER of 10−3.
Generalized Parametric Average-Value Model of Line-Commutated Rectifiers Considering AC Harmonics With Variable Frequency Operation

Line-commutated rectifiers are often utilized in machine-converter systems and many energy conversion applications. Simulation of such power systems using detailed switching models of rectifiers is computationally expensive, and as an alternative for system-level studies, the so-called average-value modeling (AVM) techniques have become indispensable. The parametric AVM (PAVM) uses a computerized approach for establishing the key relationships between the averaged ac and dc variables. In this paper, a generalized PAVM (GPAVM) is proposed, which extends several previously proposed models. The new GPAVM includes the ac harmonics in thyristor-controlled rectifier models considering their nonlinear dependency on the line frequency. The new model is verified using detailed simulations and experimental results and is demonstrated to have better accuracy in a wider range of operating conditions and speeds/frequencies.
Prediction for Crack Propagation and Arrest of Shear Fracture in Ultra-high Pressure Natural Gas Pipelines

Prevention of shear fracture in the natural gas pipelines is one of the most important problems for the safety of the natural gas transportation. The present paper gives a prediction method for the crack propagation and arrest in the ultra-high pressure pipelines which is the recent trend of the pipeline design and the toughness requirements for the high-grade line pipes to avoid the fracture.
Metabolic evaluation in neurodevelopmental disabilities

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Dynamics of an age-structured population with Allee effects and harvesting

We propose a discrete-time, age-structured population model to study the impact of Allee effects and harvesting. It is assumed that survival probabilities from one age class to the next are constants and fertility rate is a function of weighted total population size. Global extinction is certain if the maximal growth rate of the population is less than one. The model can have multiple attractors and the asymptotic dynamics of the population depend on its initial distribution if the maximal growth rate is larger than one. An Allee threshold depending on the components of the unstable interior equilibrium is derived when only the last age class can reproduce. The population becomes extinct if its initial population distribution is below the threshold. Harvesting on any particular age class can decrease the magnitude of the possible stable interior equilibrium and increase the magnitude of the unstable interior equilibrium simultaneously.
Evolution of coordination in scale-free and small world networks under information diffusion constraints

We study evolution of coordination in social systems by simulating a coordination game in an ensemble of scale-free and small-world networks and comparing the results. We give particular emphasis to the role information about the pay-offs of neighbours plays in nodes adapting strategies, by limiting this information up to various levels. We find that if nodes have no chance to evolutionarily adapt, then non-coordination is a better strategy, however when nodes adapt based on information of the neighbour payoffs, coordination quickly emerges as the better strategy. We find phase transitions in number of coordinators with respect to the relative pay-off of coordination, and these phase transitions are sharper in small-world networks. We also find that when pay-off information of neighbours is limited, small-world networks are able to better cope with this limitation than scale-free networks. We observe that provincial hubs are the quickest to evolutionarily adapt strategies, in both scale-free and small world networks. Our findings confirm that evolutionary tendencies of coordination heavily depend on network topology.
Notch1 directly induced CD133 expression in human diffuse type gastric cancers

CD133 is considered as a stem-like cell marker in some cancers including gastric cancers, and Notch1 signaling is known to play an important role in the maintenance and differentiation of stem-like cells. We aimed to investigate whether Notch1 signaling contributes to the carcinogenesis of gastric cancers and CD133 induction. CD133 expression was detected in 51.4% of diffuse type gastric cancers while it was not detected in intestinal type gastric cancers. Similarly, only poorly-differentiated gastric cancer cell lines expressed CD133 and activated-Notch1. Inhibiting Notch1 signaling resulted in decreased CD133 expression, side population cells, cell proliferation and anchorage independent cell growth. Chromatin immunoprecipitation suggested that this Notch1 dependent regulation of CD133 was caused by direct binding of activated-Notch1 to the RBP-Jκ binding site in the 5′ promoter region of CD133 gene. In addition, knocking down RBP-Jκ reduced CD133 induction in activated-Notch1 transfected cells. These findings suggested that Notch1 signaling plays an important role in the maintenance of the cancer stem-like phenotype in diffuse type gastric cancer through an RBP-Jκ dependent pathway and that inhibiting Notch1 signaling could be an effective therapy against CD133 positive diffuse type gastric cancers.
A low — Voltage hysteresis comparator for low power applications

A Hysteresis comparator with low supply voltage is proposed. The comparator has PMOS input stage, NMOS current mirror, and PMOS load stage using positive feedback. The signal of the PMOS input stage is sent to the PMOS load stage via the NMOS current mirror. Positive feedback of the PMOS load stage introduces bistable characteristics to the comparator. The hysteresis comparator with low voltage operation is required for low power applications using under noisy environment. With bistable characteristics, the comparator has two different trip point voltages when input signal crosses reference signals to upper side or crosses to lower side. The hysteresis comparator can compare input signal and reference signal correctly under noisy environment. To achieve low power system, decreasing supply voltage is widely used. Conventional hysteresis comparator doesn't suite for low power applications because it is difficult to operate transistors in comparator in saturation region. In this paper, we proposed the hysteresis comparator operating in low supply voltage. Proposed comparator operates in 0.8V supply voltage. The area of the proposed comparator is 203. 5μm2, power consumption is 0. 24μW. To achieve the low voltage operation, the proposed hysteresis comparator's input differential pair is connected to lord stage with positive feedback via the NMOS current mirror. In the load stage with positive feedback, PMOS tail transistor is used to decrease the static power consumption. The proposed comparator is suitable for low power analog — digital converters and sensor applications for battery operation applications which are used in noisy environments.
Mechanisms and models of cardiac sodium channel inactivation

ABSTRACT Shortly after cardiac Na+ channels activate and initiate the action potential, inactivation ensues within milliseconds, attenuating the peak Na+ current, INa, and allowing the cell membrane to repolarize. A very limited number of Na+ channels that do not inactivate carry a persistent INa, or late INa. While late INa is only a small fraction of peak magnitude, it significantly prolongs ventricular action potential duration, which predisposes patients to arrhythmia. Here, we review our current understanding of inactivation mechanisms, their regulation, and how they have been modeled computationally. Based on this body of work, we conclude that inactivation and its connection to late INa would be best modeled with a “feet-on-the-door” approach where multiple channel components participate in determining inactivation and late INa. This model reflects experimental findings showing that perturbation of many channel locations can destabilize inactivation and cause pathological late INa.
Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Circadian Rhythm Disorder in a Sighted Male With Normal Functioning.

ABSTRACT This is a rare case of non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder in a sighted male with normal functioning. The patient, a 23-year-old doctorate graduate student, presented with difficulty falling asleep and excessive daytime sleepiness. He reported variable sleep and wake times. Overnight baseline polysomnography was unremarkable and his Multiple Sleep Latency Test was significant for short mean sleep latency. Sleep diary and actigraphy were obtained, which demonstrated a pattern of delaying of sleep and wake times each day. He had excellent symptom response to nightly melatonin.