Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Ontological Framework for Representing Clinical Knowledge in Decision Support Systems

In the last decades, clinical evidence and expert consensus have been encoded into advanced Decision Support Systems (DSSs) in order to promote a better integration into the clinical workflow and facilitate the automatic provision of patient specific advice at the time and place where decisions are made. However, clinical knowledge, typically expressed as unstructured and free text guidelines, requires to be encoded into a computer interpretable form suitable for being interpreted and processed by DSSs. For this reason, this paper proposes an ontological framework, which enables the encoding of clinical guidelines from text to a formal representation, in order to allow querying, advanced reasoning and management in a well defined and rigorous way. In particular, it jointly manages declarative and procedural aspects of a standards based verifiable guideline model, named GLM-CDS (GuideLine Model for Clinical Decision Support), and expresses reasoning tasks that exploit such a represented knowledge in order to formalize integrity constraints, business rules and complex inference rules. Keywords—Clinical Practice Guidelines, Decision Support Systems, Ontology, Rules, Unstructured Data.
The Knightian Truthfulness of Classical Mechanisms

We study mechanisms where a player’s strategy is one of his possible (payoff) types and at least one player is Knightian, that is, cannot distinguish which element of a “candidate set” with multiple types is his true type. We call such a mechanism Knightian truthful if, in all its rational plays, every player reports his own true type, if he knows it exactly, and a type in his candidate set, if he is Knightian. We argue that Knightian truthfulness is a very desirable property. In particular, it is crucial for guaranteeing social welfare in auctions. We analyze two celebrated mechanisms, the Vickrey mechanism and the general VCG, and prove that the first is Knightian truthful, but not the second. This difference is reflected in their social welfare performance in the presence of Knightian players. We prove that the Vickrey mechanism always guarantees a very high fraction of the maximum possible social welfare in multi-unit auctions, but that in unrestricted multi-good auctions the general VCG only guarantees an abysmally low fraction of the maximum possible social welfare.
Increased Frequency of De Novo Copy Number Variants in Congenital Heart Disease by Integrative Analysis of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Array and Exome Sequence Data

Rationale: Congenital heart disease (CHD) is among the most common birth defects. Most cases are of unknown pathogenesis. Objective: To determine the contribution of de novo copy number variants (CNVs) in the pathogenesis of sporadic CHD. Methods and Results: We studied 538 CHD trios using genome-wide dense single nucleotide polymorphism arrays and whole exome sequencing. Results were experimentally validated using digital droplet polymerase chain reaction. We compared validated CNVs in CHD cases with CNVs in 1301 healthy control trios. The 2 complementary high-resolution technologies identified 63 validated de novo CNVs in 51 CHD cases. A significant increase in CNV burden was observed when comparing CHD trios with healthy trios, using either single nucleotide polymorphism array (P=7×10−5; odds ratio, 4.6) or whole exome sequencing data (P=6×10−4; odds ratio, 3.5) and remained after removing 16% of de novo CNV loci previously reported as pathogenic (P=0.02; odds ratio, 2.7). We observed recurrent de novo CNVs on 15q11.2 encompassing CYFIP1, NIPA1, and NIPA2 and single de novo CNVs encompassing DUSP1, JUN, JUP, MED15, MED9, PTPRE SREBF1, TOP2A, and ZEB2, genes that interact with established CHD proteins NKX2-5 and GATA4. Integrating de novo variants in whole exome sequencing and CNV data suggests that ETS1 is the pathogenic gene altered by 11q24.2-q25 deletions in Jacobsen syndrome and that CTBP2 is the pathogenic gene in 10q subtelomeric deletions. Conclusions: We demonstrate a significantly increased frequency of rare de novo CNVs in CHD patients compared with healthy controls and suggest several novel genetic loci for CHD.
“Greying population”: Economic, social, and ethical appreciation of old age

As the population is growing older, sociologists and economists are becoming more interested in analyzing this phenomenon. There are two paradigms for interpreting old age. The first one points to excluding old people from social and economic life. It is argued that there should be a balance between activities and possibilities of old people. The other paradigm points to the social, political and economic activities of old people until the end of their lives. It emphasizes their life experience and competencies. The article presents new processes and socio-cultural phenomena that refer to seniors. Some of them are negative like ageism, social isolation, deprivation, the uncertainty of fate and existence. Others are positive and described as “the cult of age” like the dynamic expansion of the grey people industry, development of health care and consumer projects for the elderly. The article argues that the sense and dignity of life of the elderly should be defended, as it is the main motivation and reason for living.
Nonlinear dual mode adaptive control of PAR2: a 2-dof planar parallel manipulator, with real-time experiments

This paper deals with nonlinear dual mode adaptive control of a redundant manipulator for a pick-and-place scenario with high acceleration (20G). For performance comparisons, a conventional Proportional-Derivative (PD) controller has also been implemented. In this context, the experimental testbed is not equipped with velocity sensors. Therefore, a high-gain observer has been implemented to estimate the articular velocities. Real-time experiments show the performance improvements obtained by the proposed control approach in comparison to the conventional one.
Basal promoter of the rat connexin 32 gene: identification and characterization of an essential element and its DNA-binding protein

The connexin 32 (Cx32) gene, a member of a multigene family, is expressed preferentially in the liver. The basal promoter complex of the rat Cx32 gene was previously localized to a 146-bp region (map positions [mp] -179 to -34) immediately upstream of the first exon. To investigate the biochemical factors contributing to the basal promoter activity, nuclear protein-DNA complexes within this region (mp -177 to -106) were investigated by using a DNA mobility shift assay. Three DNA-protein binding activities, termed Cx32-B1, Cx32-B2, and Cx32-B3, were identified with nuclear protein extracts from hepatoma cell lines, HuH7 and FAO-1. However, only Cx32-B2 binding activity was detected in nuclear protein extract from normal rat liver tissue. This activity was significantly more abundant in rat liver tissue than in hepatoma cell lines and tissues from various other organs. By using methylation interference footprinting, the Cx32-B2 complex was localized to the region between mp -152 and -127 and a DNA probe containing this region bound to a 60-kDa protein in rat liver nuclear extracts. Mutation of two nucleotides in the Cx32-B2 binding site abrogated the formation of the Cx32-B2 protein-DNA complex and significantly reduced the transcriptional activity of the Cx32 promoter. These results indicate that the Cx32-B2 complex is an essential component of the rat Cx32 basal promoter and is likely a major factor in the preferential expression of this gene in the liver.
Genome-Wide Comparative Analysis of the Phospholipase D Gene Families among Allotetraploid Cotton and Its Diploid Progenitors

In this study, 40 phospholipase D (PLD) genes were identified from allotetraploid cotton Gossypium hirsutum, and 20 PLD genes were examined in diploid cotton Gossypium raimondii. Combining with 19 previously identified Gossypium arboreum PLD genes, a comparative analysis was performed among the PLD gene families among allotetraploid and two diploid cottons. Based on the orthologous relationships, we found that almost each G. hirsutum PLD had a corresponding homolog in the G. arboreum and G. raimondii genomes, except for GhPLDβ3A, whose homolog GaPLDβ3 may have been lost during the evolution of G. arboreum after the interspecific hybridization. Phylogenetic analysis showed that all of the cotton PLDs were unevenly classified into six numbered subgroups: α, β/γ, δ, ε, ζ and φ. An N-terminal C2 domain was found in the α, β/γ, δ and ε subgroups, while phox homology (PX) and pleckstrin homology (PH) domains were identified in the ζ subgroup. The subgroup φ possessed a single peptide instead of a functional domain. In each phylogenetic subgroup, the PLDs showed high conservation in gene structure and amino acid sequences in functional domains. The expansion of GhPLD and GrPLD gene families were mainly attributed to segmental duplication and partly attributed to tandem duplication. Furthermore, purifying selection played a critical role in the evolution of PLD genes in cotton. Quantitative RT-PCR documented that allotetraploid cotton PLD genes were broadly expressed and each had a unique spatial and developmental expression pattern, indicating their functional diversification in cotton growth and development. Further analysis of cis-regulatory elements elucidated transcriptional regulations and potential functions. Our comparative analysis provided valuable information for understanding the putative functions of the PLD genes in cotton fiber.
Epigenetic disruption of cell signaling in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a malignancy with remarkable ethnic and geographic distribution in southern China and Southeast Asia. Alternative to genetic changes, aberrant epigenetic events disrupt multiple genes involved in cell signaling pathways through DNA methylation of promoter CpG islands and/or histone modifications. These epigenetic alterations grant cell growth advantage and contribute to the initiation and progression of NPC. In this review, we summarize the epigenetic deregulation of cell signaling in NPC tumorigenesis and highlight the importance of identifying epigenetic cell signaling regulators in NPC research. Developing pharmacologic strategies to reverse the epigenetic-silencing of cell signaling regulators might thus be useful to NPC prevention and therapy.
Androgen deprivation therapy prevents bladder cancer recurrence

Although accumulating preclinical evidence indicates the involvement of androgen receptor signals in bladder cancer (BC) development, its clinical relevance remains unclear. We aimed to evaluate the predictive role of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in BC recurrence in prostate cancer (PC) patients. We retrospectively reviewed 20,328 patients with PC diagnosed during 1991–2013 and identified 239 (1.2%) men having primary BC. After excluding ineligible patients, 162 patients made up a final cohort. With a median follow-up of 62 months, 38 (50%) of 76 control patients without ADT experienced BC recurrence, while 19 (22%) of 86 did in ADT group. Thus, patients having received ADT for their PC showed a significantly lower risk of BC recurrence (5-year actuarial recurrence-free survival: 76% v 40%; P < 0.001) and also had a significantly smaller number of recurrence episodes (5-year cumulative recurrence: 0.44 v 1.54; P < 0.001), compared to the control patients. A multivariable analysis revealed ADT as an independent prognosticator (hazard ratio, 0.29; 95% confidence interval, 0.17–0.49) for BC recurrence. This is the first clinical study showing that ADT significantly reduces the risk of BC recurrence.
Estimating Income Mobility in Argentina with pseudo-panel data

The degree of mobility in the individual income is an important matter in those societies where the aggregated inequality has been broadened. Being economic mobility a long term phenomenon by nature, its measuring requires a long panel data to perform it, but the lack of such data and the existence of the common biased due to measurement error are a warning to this methodology. However, it is possible to obtain consistent estimations of the mobility using a dynamic pseudo-panel. This method is applied to data on incomes in Argentina for the period 1985-2004.
Clues for the Identification of Implicit Information in Multimodal Referring Actions - DRAFT VERSION

The implicit is an imprecise and heterogeneous notion that plays a role, not only in the global comprehension of utterances, but also in the interpretation of reduced phenomena like multimodal referring actions, which combine visual perception, language, and gesture. The identification of the intended referents relies on the correct identification of implicit information that is communicated with the multimodal utterance. The implicit can be linked either to the conjoined use of multiple modalities, to the cognitive status of referents and reference contexts, to the dialogue history, to inferences which occur during the interpretation process, and to interpretative effects for future utterances. For each of these types of the implicit, we focus on the determination of clues that allow the specification of reference domains (structured sub-contexts for reference resolution). We show that this notion of reference domain can integrate all these aspects with computational objectives, thus laying the foundations to a future algorithm for implicit identification.
Covert Voice over Internet Protocol Communications with Packet Loss Based on Fractal Interpolation

The last few years have witnessed an explosive growth in the research of information hiding in multimedia objects, but few studies have taken into account packet loss in multimedia networks. As one of the most popular real-time services in the Internet, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) contributes to a large part of network traffic for its advantages of real time, high flow, and low cost. So packet loss is inevitable in multimedia networks and affects the performance of VoIP communications. In this study, a fractal-based VoIP steganographic approach was proposed to realize covert VoIP communications in the presence of packet loss. In the proposed scheme, secret data to be hidden were divided into blocks after being encrypted with the block cipher, and each block of the secret data was then embedded into VoIP streaming packets. The VoIP packets went through a packet-loss system based on Gilbert model which simulates a real network situation. And a prediction model based on fractal interpolation was built to decide whether a VoIP packet was suitable for data hiding. The experimental results indicated that the speech quality degradation increased with the escalating packet-loss level. The average variance of speech quality metrics (PESQ score) between the “no-embedding” speech samples and the “with-embedding” stego-speech samples was about 0.717, and the variances narrowed with the increasing packet-loss level. Both the average PESQ scores and the SNR values of stego-speech samples and the data-retrieving rates had almost the same varying trends when the packet-loss level increased, indicating that the success rate of the fractal prediction model played an important role in the performance of covert VoIP communications.
REUSES: Questionnaire-driven design for the automatic generation of web-based collaborative applications

In this paper, we present a questionnaire-driven collaborative design methodology for the automatic generation of collaborative applications. The methodology is based on a repository of collaborative components and a knowledge base of its application and use modes. The repository includes components built by our team, as well as third-party components that use heterogeneous technologies like JavaScript, Java, Flash, and services and components provided by companies like Google and Facebook. Based on this methodology, we have built a Web 2.0 tool called REUSES (Rapid End-User Synthesis of Collaborative Applications), which provides facilities for the automatic generation of Web-based collaborative applications tailored to any particular community of end users. Finally, we also report on some experimental work to test REUSES in the context of academic courses at our University.
Smartphone gaming and frequent use pattern associated with smartphone addiction

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the risk factors of smartphone addiction in high school students. A total of 880 adolescents were recruited from a vocational high school in Taiwan in January 2014 to complete a set of questionnaires, including the 10-item Smartphone Addiction Inventory, Chen Internet Addiction Scale, and a survey of content and patterns of personal smartphone use. Of those recruited, 689 students (646 male) aged 14 to 21 and who owned a smartphone completed the questionnaire. Multiple linear regression models were used to determine the variables associated with smartphone addiction. Smartphone gaming and frequent smartphone use were associated with smartphone addiction. Furthermore, both the smartphone gaming-predominant and gaming with multiple-applications groups showed a similar association with smartphone addiction. Gender, duration of owning a smartphone, and substance use were not associated with smartphone addiction. Our findings suggest that smartphone use patterns should be part of specific measures to prevent and intervene in cases of excessive smartphone use.
Objects Specific Role: An Approach to Solving Roles Redundant Problem

In many organizations, there are projects of the same kind continually being created to work on. When role-based access control (RABC) is applied to resources' access control in these organizations, a problem arises, that is, the coming projects make a series of similar roles that are with same functions be created continually, and this makes roles administration hard. The similar roles are different because they are for different projects although they are of the same kind, so merging the similar roles into a single role doesn't work. We call this problem as roles redundant problem, and to solve it, we extend the RBAC model using the idea of objects specific role, by which we can simplify roles administration, and make sure that the difference between the original similar roles still holds.
Viewer, Co‑creator or Artist? Changes in the Mass Media Audience Behaviour under the Influence of Social Media and Big Data

The article deals with the issue of the influence of the evolution of contemporary mass media on the behaviour of their recipients and creators. Former passive viewers – consumers of content now have an opportunity to become much more closely involved in the media message and become its active co‑creators thanks to various forms of interactive interpersonal communication. The aim of the paper is to analyse the opportunities and threats resulting from these processes, with a particular emphasis on the role of humans in creating and filtering the growing collections of content available in digital mass media.
Preliminary evaluation of the audience-driven movie

In this paper we introduce an audience-driven theater experience, DIM Movie, in which audience participates in a pre-created CG movie as its roles, and report the subjective and physiological evaluations for the audience experience offered by DIM movie. Specifically, we present three different experiences to an audience-a traditional movie, its Self-DIM (SDIM) version with the audience's participation, and its Self-Friend-DIM (SFDIM) version with co-participation of the audience and his friends. The evaluation results show that the DIM movies (SDIM and SFDIM) elicit greater subjective sense of presence, engagement, and emotional reaction, and stronger physiological response (galvanic skin response, GSR) as compared with the traditional movie form; moreover, audiences show a phasic GSR increase responding to the appearance of their own or friends' CG characters on the movie screen.
Efficient graphical models for sequence segmentation

Segmentation of sequences is an important modeling primitive with several applications. Training and inference of segmentation models involves dynamic programming computations that in the worst case can be cubic in the length of a sequence. In contrast, typical sequence labeling models require linear time. We propose an alternative graphical model for efficient sharing of potentials across overlapping segments. We then design message passing algorithms that are significantly faster than the original cubic algorithms. When segmentation models are posed as large margin structured classification tasks, our algorithm directly impact the computation of marginals for exponentiated gradient training algorithms [1] and modes for cutting plane algorithms [7].
Research and implementation of shortest path algorithm on PLY triangular mesh model

Three-dimensional virtual surgery has received a significant amount of attention in recent years. It is necessary to mark organ lesions and add ablation path on virtual organ model. The contribution of this paper is that we propose and implement a new shortest path algorithm based on PLY triangular mesh model. The algorithm follows the topology structure of model and is simple to implement. We add ablation line on three dimensional heart model efficiently and correctly utilizing the proposed algorithm and have a comparison with some traditional algorithms. The experiments show that the proposed shortest path algorithm is not likely to deviate from the target node compared to Dijkstra, moreover, the speed of our algorithm meets the needs of the project very well.
Multiple Granularity-Based Feature Combination for Face Recognition

In face recognition, coarsening-granularity image blocks mainly reflect some contour features and global information of human face identity. On the other hand, refining-granularity face parts can carry more local features about identifying information, for example: mouth, eyes and brows, etc. This paper proposes the framework of multi-granularity feature combination. Under the framework, a multi-granularity feature combination algorithm (MGFC) for face recognition is given, which uses the two-scale windows and two-stage feature extraction method. Some experimental results on benchmark face database demonstrate that MGFC algorithm is effective and can obtain a higher recognition rate than single granularity feature extraction algorithm.
Five nines of southbound reliability in software-defined networks

In order to deploy fault-tolerant Software-Defined Networks (SDN), the logically centralized controller must be physically distributed among different devices. In this paper, we present our initial work on determining how many controllers need to be instantiated, where they must be deployed, and what network nodes are under control of each of them, in order to achieve at least five nines reliability in the southbound interface between controllers and nodes. For this, we introduce the Fault Tolerant Controller Placement problem and develop a heuristic algorithm that computes placements with (at least) the required reliability. We run such algorithm on a set of 124 publicly available network topologies. We find that each node is required to connect to just 2 or 3 controllers, which typically provide more than five nines reliability. While the total number of controllers varies greatly and is more related to the network topology than to the network size, 10 controllers or less cover 75% of the most interesting cases. Therefore, fault tolerant SDNs are achievable by carefully determining the placement of controllers.