Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk scores and geriatric profile: can they really help us in anticoagulation decision making among older patients suffering from atrial fibrillation?

Objectives Anticoagulation for the prevention of cardio-embolism is most frequently indicated but largely underused in frail older patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). This study aimed at identifying characteristics associated with anticoagulation underuse. Methods A cross-sectional study of consecutive geriatric patients aged ≥75 years, with AF and clear anticoagulation indication (CHADS2 [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age >75, Diabetes mellitus, and prior Stroke or transient ischemic attack] ≥2) upon hospital admission. All patients benefited from a comprehensive geriatric assessment. Their risks of stroke and bleeding were predicted using CHADS2 and HEMORR2HAGES (Hepatic or renal disease, Ethanol abuse, Malignancy, Older (age >75 years), Reduced platelet count or function, Rebleed risk, Hypertension (uncontrolled), Anemia, Genetic factors, Excessive fall risk, and Stroke) scores, respectively. Results Anticoagulation underuse was observed in 384 (50%) of 773 geriatric patients with AF (median age 85 years; female 57%, cognitive disorder 33%, nursing home 20%). No geriatric characteristic was found to be associated with anticoagulation underuse. Conversely, anticoagulation underuse was markedly increased in the patients treated with aspirin (odds ratio [OR] [95% confidence interval]: 5.3 [3.8; 7.5]). Other independent predictors of anticoagulation underuse were ethanol abuse (OR: 4.0 [1.4; 13.3]) and age ≥90 years (OR: 2.0 [1.2; 3.4]). Anticoagulation underuse was not inferior in patients with a lower bleeding risk and/or a higher stroke risk and underuse was surprisingly not inferior either in the AF patients who had previously had a stroke. Conclusion Half of this geriatric population did not receive any anticoagulation despite a clear indication, regardless of their individual bleeding or stroke risks. Aspirin use is the main characteristic associated with anticoagulation underuse.
Bug Signature Minimization and Fusion

Debugging is a time-consuming activity. To help in debugging, many approaches have been proposed to pinpoint the location of errors given labeled failures and correct executions. While such approaches have been shown to be accurate, at times the location alone is not sufficient in helping programmers understand why the bug happens and how to fix it. Furthermore, a single location might not be powerful enough to discriminate failures from correct executions. To address the above challenges, there have been recent studies on extracting bug signatures which are composed of multiple locations appearing together in a particular order signifying an occurrence of a bug. The latest study on bug signatures by Cheng et al. models program executions as graphs. Two sets of graphs corresponding to failures and correct executions are then contrasted to extract the most discriminative connected sub graphs serving as bug signatures. However, there are two limitations: (1) returned signatures might not be minimal and (2) they can only capture localized bug context. In this work, we develop a signature minimization technique to capture minimal discriminative signatures. Also, we propose a technique of signature fusion to fuse disconnected sub graphs so that our method can capture bug contexts spanning multiple locations. Experimental study on Siemens and Space dataset shows the effectiveness of the proposed bug signature minimization and fusion techniques. Comparing with the state-of-the-art bug signature mining technique, we reduce the number of bugs missed by up to 57.7%, and reduce the average number of nodes traversed by up to 85.6%.
Semantic relatedness in semantic networks

This paper presents a new semantic relatedness measure on semantic networks (SN) that uses both hierarchical and non-hierarchical relations. Our approach relies on two assumptions. Firstly, in a given SN, only a few numbers of paths can be considered as “semantically correct” and these paths obey to a given set of rules. Secondly, following a given edge in a path has a cost (which depends on its type, is-a, part-of, etc.) and its position in the path. We propose an evaluation of our measure on WordNet with two different benchmarks, using the part-of relation. We show that, in this context, our measure does better than the classical semantic measures.
First generation of gender and HIV programs: Seeking clarity and synergy

In the past decade there have been expanding resources to address the underlying gender dimensions of HIV. This has been particularly urgent in sub-Saharan Africa as the female-to-male infection ratios in young populations has reached 3 to 1 and sometimes above. The phrase "gender and HIV" has become commonplace yet does not provide any specific guidance as to target audiences content or measurable results. It can include everything from microcredit programs for HIV-positive women to workplace programs seeking to change negative male norms to efforts to increase respect for diverse sexual and gender identities. This review mines the first generation of programs to provide an empirical foundation to inform a next generation. We examined 63 illustrative (and among the largest and best known) "gender and HIV programs. " Data were obtained via programs own reports (garnered largely through interactive interviews) of how they selected their populations and targeted their interventions; whether and to what degree they conceptualize and address the distinct needs of males and females. It also inquired as to whether there were explicit links between populations of males and females in program design and in measurement of results. Pressing for clarity and answers to these questions will assist in translating the current interest in "gender" into more precise tailoring of interventions to specific age gender and partnership-status profiles. We conclude this program review with several recommendations: (1) redirecting HIV programs to primary prevention building the protective assets of those most at risk particularly the youngest of those who face the highest risk -- adolescent girls and young women deserve a larger share of resources and policy attention than they have been receiving; (2) locating populations of males for intervention guided by the needs of the most at-risk females; (3) defining gender-specific goals for females and males as separate but linked "social accounts" resulting in (a) safer and more confident girls and women who are able to claim their rights act on their own behalf and have opportunities and choices and (b) men and boys who will benefit from less rigid gender roles and who recognize the full humanity of others and treat them with respect.
A study on users’ experiences with VR applications of artworks

Through the convergence and integrated approach, this study investigates participants’ overall experiences with VR applications and examines the existence of virtual aura. Perception of the presence of aura depended on the quality of VR applications and their suitability for art appreciation. Participants’ previous viewing experiences, which were correlated with perception of the presence of aura, negatively affected on the degree of satisfaction with VR applications as well as on the evaluation of the suitability for learning. The auras were mitigated in the virtual reproductions for participants with previous viewing experiences. In their stances, pictorial sameness of VR applications did not promise aesthetic sameness of the originals. On the contrary, the aura were appropriately migrated in the reproductions for participants without those experiences. To sum up, VR applications have great potential to introduce participants to the art world. They stimulate intrinsic motivations for learning and offer meaningfulness in the affective process of art appreciation.
Investigation on the Dependence of TCP Upstream Throughput on Snr for Single and Multiple Links in a Wlan System

An empirical investigation on the dependence of TCP upstream throughput (TCPupT) against signal to noise ratio (SNR) in an IEEE802.11b WLAN system was carried out in various environments and varieties of QoS traffic using an Infrastructure based IEEE802.11b WLAN system set up consecutively in various environments (open corridor, small offices with block walls or plaster boards and free space). Empirical models describing the TCPupT against SNR for different signal ranges (all signals, strong signals, grey signals and weak signals) were developed and validated for both single and multiple users on the network. Our results show a strong dependence of TCPupT on the received SNR which varied as the SNR values changed from high (strong signals) through low (grey signals) to very low (weak signals). Our models showed lower RMS errors when they and other similar models were compared with validation data. We observed RMS errors of 0.5605471Mbps, 0.4479389Mbps, 1.04536603Mbps and 0.5813471Mbps for the General, Strong signals, Grey signals and Weak signals models respectively for the single user scenario. We also observed RMS errors of 1.3319396Mbps, 0.9457431Mbps, 0.8092979Mbps and 0.4220292Mbps for the multiple users scenario. An appreciable difference was observed between the throughput behavior for single and multiple users on the network showing the inefficiency of the distributed coordination function and Point coordination function used in WLANs as access mechanisms. Our models will provide researchers and WLAN systems users with a tool to estimate the TCP upstream throughput in a real network in various environments by monitoring the SNR.
Lack of restriction of T cell receptor β variable gene usage in cerebrospinal fluid lymphocytes in acute optic neuritis

OBJECTIVES There have been many studies reporting restricted patterns of T cell receptor usage in established multiple sclerosis and these have led to clinical trials of immunomodulation directed at deleting clonal T cell populations. The present study aims to test the hypothesis that highly restricted T cell populations are also present in the CSF in the earliest clinical stages of acute demyelinating disease of the CNS. METHODS T cell receptor Vβ (TCRBV) gene expression was studied in CSF and blood in nine patients with acute optic neuritis within 7 days of onset of symptoms, six patients with an acute relapse of multiple sclerosis, and 13 control subjects. RNA was extracted and cDNA synthesised from unstimulated CSF and blood lymphocytes, and TCRBV gene segments were amplified from the cDNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using 21 family specific primers. PCR products were separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and detected via a labelled oligonucleotide probe. A semiquantitative analysis of band intensity was performed by laser densitometry. RESULTS TCRBV mRNA was detected in the CSF of eight of nine patients with optic neuritis, six of six patients with multiple sclerosis, and five of 13 controls, and was closely correlated with the presence of oligoclonal IgG. Usage of a single TCRBV family was demonstrated in two of nine patients with optic neuritis and two of six patients with multiple sclerosis. The number of TCRBV families expressed in the other patients ranged between 5 and 15 (optic neuritis) and 4 and 17 (multiple sclerosis). CONCLUSIONS There is a relative lack of restriction of TCRBV usage by CSF lymphocytes in the very earliest stages (<7 days) of acute optic neuritis. This may imply either that multiple sclerosis is not a monoclonal disease even at onset, or that the autoimmune response has widened before the disease becomes clinically evident. This may have important consequences for the design of immune therapies in multiple sclerosis. Further studies are required to determine whether the CSF T cell repertoire at presentation has prognostic importance. Longitudinal studies are required to follow the CSF T cell repertoire from the time of presentation and to determine whether it may have prognostic significance.
Database Discovery Using Neural Net Agent

As the number and diversity of text databases on the Internet increases rapidly, users are faced with finding the text databases that are relevant to the user query. Identifying the relevant text databases out of many candidates for a given query is called the text database discovery problem. In this paper, we propose a neural net based approach to the text database discovery problem. First, we present a neural net agent that learns about underlying text databases from the user’s relevance feedback. For a given query, the neural net agent, which is suff iciently trained on the basis of the BPN learning mechanism, discovers the text databases associated with the relevant documents and retrieves those documents effectively. In order to scale our approach with the large number of text databases, we also propose the hierarchical organization of neural net agents which reduces the total training cost at the acceptable level. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our approach by comparing it to those of the conventional well known statistical approaches.
Lecture # 24: Clustering

1 Overview In this lecture, we briefly survey problems in geometric clustering. We define the problem formally, give the most commonly used objective functions, discuss the trade-offs between these objectives, and then give some of the more well-known algorithms and results in this area. One of the most widely-studied problems in geometric optimization is that of clustering. As input, we are typically given a finite point set S = {p 1 , p 2 ,. , p n } ⊂ R d and an integer k ≥ 1. Our goal then is to partition S into k subsets s 1 ,. , s k , or clusters, such that each point exists in exactly one subset. Many times in practice, k is not given as part of the input, but for the algorithms described in this lecture we will assume that k is known. In some cases, we may assume k is fixed for all instances of the problem (for example, we will discuss algorithms for the case where k = 1 later on). One can use a variety of objectives functions, but at a high level, we would like for points placed in the same cluster to be close to one another, while points in different clusters should be spaced far apart; these two criteria are referred to as intra-cluster and inter-cluster distances, respectively. One cannot hope to optimize both these types of distances simultaneously, so a given objective will focus on meeting only one of these criterion. In this lecture, we will look at objectives that optimize intra-cluster distances. Clustering has a wide array of applications. Any area where data, objects, or structures need to be classified into groups will likely use some form of clustering analysis, e.g., bioinformatics, image analysis, pattern recognition, and data compression. Note that in some cases, it may not be possible to embed the objects of interest into a d-dimensional euclidean space (for example, protein-structures); however, in such instances we can still define a metric over the objects and instead solve the problem in a metric-space setting. Also, for d-dimensional data sets where d is very large, it is unreasonable to expect for points to be separated in every dimension. Therefore in this case one does projective clustering, where points are projected into a lower dimensional space and clustered there instead. For a more comprehensive introduction to clustering algorithms and their …
Clear sky UV simulations for the 21st century based on ozone and temperature projections from Chemistry-Climate Models

We have estimated changes in surface solar ul- traviolet (UV) radiation under cloud free conditions in the 21st century based on simulations of 11 coupled Chemistry- Climate Models (CCMs). The total ozone columns and ver- tical profiles of ozone and temperature projected from CCMs were used as input to a radiative transfer model in order to calculate the corresponding erythemal irradiance levels. Time series of monthly erythemal irradiance received at the surface during local noon are presented for the period 1960 to 2100. Starting from the first decade of the 21st century, the surface erythemal irradiance decreases globally as a result of the projected stratospheric ozone recovery at rates that are larger in the first half of the 21st century and smaller towards its end. This decreasing tendency varies with latitude, be- ing more pronounced over areas where stratospheric ozone
Social Psychology of Visual Perception

J. Bruner, Foreword: A New Look at the New Look. E. Balcetis, G. Daniel Lassiter, Introduction. Part 1. Motivation and the Social Psychology of Visual Perception. K. Pauker, N.O. Rule, N. Ambady, Ambiguity and Social Perception. D. Isaacowitz, H. Fung, Motivation Across Time and Place: What Gaze Can Tell Us About Aging and Culture. S. Duffy , S. Kitayama, Cultural Modes of Seeing Through Cultural Modes of Being: Cultural Influences on Visual Attention. E. Balcetis, D. Dunning, Wishful Seeing: Motivational Influences on Visual Perception of the Physical Environment. L. Johnston, L. Miles, N. Macrae, Male or Female? An Investigation of Factors that Modulate the Sex-Categorization of Strangers. Part 2. Neuroscience and the Social Psychology of Visual Perception. M. Weierich, L. Feldman Barrett, Affect as a Source of Visual Attention. R. Todd, A. Anderson, The Role of the Amygdala in Vision. M.P. Viggiano, T. Marzi, Context and Social Effects on Face Recognition. L.M. Oberman, P. Winkielman, V.S. Ramachandran, Embodied Simulation: A Conduit for Converting Seeing into Perceiving. Part 3. Ecological Approach to the Social Psychology of Visual Perception. G.D. Lassiter, M. Lindbergh, J. Ratcliff, L. Ware, A.L. Geers, Top-down Influences on the Perception of Ongoing Behavior. K. Johnson, J. Freeman, A New Look at Person Construal: Seeing Beyond Dominance and Discreteness. J. Stefanucci, Emotional High: Emotion and the Perception of Spatial Layout. J. Montepare, "Cue, View, Action:" An Ecological Approach to Person Perception.
Semantics in Indigenous American Languages: 1917–2017 and Beyond1

Over the 100 years since IJAL’s inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of the Americas has advanced the field in at least three major ways. It has greatly expanded our empirical knowledge of semantics in non-European languages, it has provided methodological breakthroughs, and it has had significant impact on linguistic theory. This paper provides an overview of contributions and progress in these three areas over the past century, focusing in particular on languages of the Pacific Northwest. It concludes with thoughts about what needs to be done in the next century.
The University of Birmingham ( Live System ) Appetitive memory reconsolidation depends upon NMDA receptor-mediated neurotransmission

Publisher Rights Statement: NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory [Volume 90, Issue 1, July 2008, Pages 147–154] DOI:10.1016/j.nlm. 2008.02. 004
On Approximate Diagonalization of Correlation Matrices in Widely Linear Signal Processing

The so called “augmented” statistics of complex random variables has established that both the covariance and pseudocovariance are necessary to fully describe second order properties of noncircular complex signals. To jointly decorrelate the covariance and pseudocovariance matrix, the recently proposed strong uncorrelating transform (SUT) requires two singular value decompositions (SVDs). In this correspondence, we further illuminate the structure of these matrices and demonstrate that for univariate noncircular data it is sufficient to diagonalize the pseudocovariance matrix-this ensures that the covariance matrix is also approximately diagonal. The proposed approach is shown to result in lower computational complexity and enhanced numerical stability, and to enable elegant new formulations of performance bounds in widely linear signal processing. The analysis is supported by illustrative case studies and simulation examples.
Voltage-dependent inactivation gating at the selectivity filter of the MthK K+ channel

Voltage-dependent K+ channels can undergo a gating process known as C-type inactivation, which involves entry into a nonconducting state through conformational changes near the channel’s selectivity filter. C-type inactivation may involve movements of transmembrane voltage sensor domains, although the mechanisms underlying this form of inactivation may be heterogeneous and are often unclear. Here, we report on a form of voltage-dependent inactivation gating observed in MthK, a prokaryotic K+ channel that lacks a canonical voltage sensor and may thus provide a reduced system to inform on mechanism. In single-channel recordings, we observe that Po decreases with depolarization, with a half-maximal voltage of 96 ± 3 mV. This gating is kinetically distinct from blockade by internal Ca2+ or Ba2+, suggesting that it may arise from an intrinsic inactivation mechanism. Inactivation gating was shifted toward more positive voltages by increasing external [K+] (47 mV per 10-fold increase in [K+]), suggesting that K+ binding at the extracellular side of the channel stabilizes the open-conductive state. The open-conductive state was stabilized by other external cations, and selectivity of the stabilizing site followed the sequence: K+ ≈ Rb+ > Cs+ > Na+ > Li+ ≈ NMG+. Selectivity of the stabilizing site is weaker than that of sites that determine permeability of these ions, suggesting that the site may lie toward the external end of the MthK selectivity filter. We could describe MthK gating over a wide range of positive voltages and external [K+] using kinetic schemes in which the open-conductive state is stabilized by K+ binding to a site that is not deep within the electric field, with the voltage dependence of inactivation arising from both voltage-dependent K+ dissociation and transitions between nonconducting (inactivated) states. These results provide a quantitative working hypothesis for voltage-dependent, K+-sensitive inactivation gating, a property that may be common to other K+ channels.
The extent of visual space inferred from perspective angles

Retinal images are perspective projections of the visual environment. Perspective projections do not explain why we perceive perspective in 3-D space. Analysis of underlying spatial transformations shows that visual space is a perspective transformation of physical space if parallel lines in physical space vanish at finite distance in visual space. Perspective angles, i.e., the angle perceived between parallel lines in physical space, were estimated for rails of a straight railway track. Perspective angles were also estimated from pictures taken from the same point of view. Perspective angles between rails ranged from 27% to 83% of their angular size in the retinal image. Perspective angles prescribe the distance of vanishing points of visual space. All computed distances were shorter than 6 m. The shallow depth of a hypothetical space inferred from perspective angles does not match the depth of visual space, as it is perceived. Incongruity between the perceived shape of a railway line on the one hand and the experienced ratio between width and length of the line on the other hand is huge, but apparently so unobtrusive that it has remained unnoticed. The incompatibility between perspective angles and perceived distances casts doubt on evidence for a curved visual space that has been presented in the literature and was obtained from combining judgments of distances and angles with physical positions.