Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asps: Do They Work?

Abstract Application service providers (ASPs) offer and manage outsourcing application services to many organizations via the Internet. Organizations outsource applications to ASPs to reduce upgrade and maintenance costs and to focus their efforts on core competencies. To that end, it is essential for CIOs and senior IT executives to understand the dynamics of the ASP market, services provided, and outsourcing trends within their particular industries. This study identifies the critical success factors (CSFs) for ASPs to sustain the fierce competition in the outsourcing market. the CSFs include delivery of applications, efficiency in responding to demands, management of resources, assurance of 24/7 access, meeting IT needs, and economic distribution of applications. Moreover, the study highlights issues of concern involved in outsourcing internal applications via the Internet, such as security, reliability, quality of service, employees' concerns, and existing infrastructure, and provides managers with an action plan to address these concerns.
EECoG-Comp: An Open Source Platform for Concurrent EEG/ECoG Comparisons: applications to connectivity stuides

Electrophysiological Source Imaging (ESI) methods are hampered by the lack of “gold standards” for model comparison. Concurrent electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings (namely EECoG) are considered gold standard to validating EEG generative models with primate models have the unique advantages of both flexibility and translational value in human research. However the severe EEG artifacts during such invasive experiments, the complexity of providing sufficiently detailed biophysical models, as well as lacking sound statistical connectivity comparison methods have hampered the availability and analysis of such datasets. In this paper, 1) we provide EECoG-Comp: an open source platform (https://github.com/Vincent-wq/EECoG-Comp) which encompasses the preprocessing, forward modeling, simulation and comparison module; 2) we take the simultaneous EECoG dataset from www.neurotycho. org as an example to illustrate the use of this platform and compare the source connectivity estimation performance of 4 popular ESI methods named MNE, LCMV, eLORETA and SSBL. The conclusion shows the limits of performance of these ESI connectivity estimators using both simulations and real data analysis. In fact, the use of this platform also suggests the need for both improved simultaneous EEG and ECoG experiments and ESI connectivity estimators.
Estimating rates of rare events with multiple hierarchies through scalable log-linear models

We consider the problem of estimating rates of rare events for high dimensional, multivariate categorical data where several dimensions are hierarchical. Such problems are routine in several data mining applications including computational advertising, our main focus in this paper. We propose LMMH, a novel log-linear modeling method that scales to massive data applications with billions of training records and several million potential predictors in a map-reduce framework. Our method exploits correlations in aggregates observed at multiple resolutions when working with multiple hierarchies; stable estimates at coarser resolution provide informative prior information to improve estimates at finer resolutions. Other than prediction accuracy and scalability, our method has an inbuilt variable screening procedure based on a "spike and slab prior" that provides parsimony by removing non-informative predictors without hurting predictive accuracy. We perform large scale experiments on data from real computational advertising applications and illustrate our approach on datasets with several billion records and hundreds of millions of predictors. Extensive comparisons with other benchmark methods show significant improvements in prediction accuracy.
Fundamentals for a Systematic Approach to Mild and Moderate Inherited Bleeding Disorders: A EHA Consensus Report

Healthy subjects frequently report minor bleedings that are frequently ‘ background noise ’ of normality rather than a true disorder. Nevertheless,unexpectedorunusualbleedingmaybealarming.Thus,thedistinctionbetweennormalandpathologicbleedingiscritical. fora bleedingphenotypequalifyingforaMBD. Inspeci ﬁ ccircumstances,incaseofdoubtful bleedinghistoryin young people undergoing surgery (e.g., tonsillectomy) or other hemostatic challenges, the presence of low VWF may guide speci ﬁ c replacement therapy. Standard platelet aggregometry (LTA) is imperfect and technically challenging but remains the best screen available for a mild/moderate inherited platelet disorder. Quality assurance testing and use of a standardized battery of agonists are critical. Where available, lumi-aggregometry may be preferred because rare platelet disorders may have normal platelet aggregation, but abnormal granule release, like the Hermansky Pudlak syndrome; however the disease can be suspected by physical examination.
Measures of Decision Aid Quality Are Preference-Sensitive and Interest-Conflicted - 1 Normative Measures

Population-level studies confirm the existence of significant rates of overdiagnosis and overtreatment in a number of conditions, particularly those for which the screening of asymptomatic individuals is routine. The implication is that the possibility of being overdiagnosed and/or overtreated must be mentioned as a possible harm in generating informed consent and participation from the individual invited to be screened. But how should the rates of such preference-insensitive population-level phenomena be introduced into preference-sensitive individual decision making? Three possible strategies are rejected, including the currently dominant one that involves presenting the rates relevant to overdiagnosis and overtreatment as discrete pieces of information about a single criterion (typically condition-specific mortality). Extensive quotation from a review of cancer decision aids confirms that processing this complex and isolated information is not a practical approach. However, the task is unnecessary, since an outcome-focused multicriteria decision support tool will incorporate the effects of overdiagnosis and overtreatment - along with the effects of any underdiagnosis and undertreatment.
Greenhouse Gas Emission Baselines and Reduction Potentials from Buildings in South Africa

The report concludes that the operation of non-residential and residential building sectors account for around 23% of total emissions. Of this, non-residential sector accounts for around 10% of total emissions and the urban and rural high-medium income residential sectors account for around 8%. In addition, it is estimated that the manufacture of building materials accounts for around 5% of total emissions.
Global Supply Chain Disruptions and Product Market Competition∗

We examine how disruptions to supply chains impact firms around the world. Sales decline sharply for U.S. firms with Chinese suppliers in the first half of 2020 and then again for most of 2021, as production was impacted in China in early 2020 with the initial coronavirus outbreak and suffered additional related setbacks in 2021 when U.S. demand surged. Risk-adjusted stock market and bond market values also decline. Notably, these sales and market-value losses occurred among firms operating in less competitive industries. While the number of Chinese suppliers initially decline for affected U.S. firms, it was back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021. Sales also decline for international firms with Chinese suppliers, but the effect was modest and concentrated in 2020q1, seemingly because these firms could source from non-Chinese suppliers. Overall, our findings point to limited competition as an important channel through which supply chain disruptions lead to sustained sales losses. The main policy implication is that fostering competition can mitigate the effect of negative supply shocks on economic activities.
Interior Point Algorithm for Linear Programming Problem and Related inscribed Ellipsoids Applications.

The interior point algorithm of Karmarkar (1984) was received with great interest. His work was the route of various development in the field of linear programming and very soon in related field such as linear complimentarily, quadratic, convex as well as non-linear programming problems. In this paper we developed theoretical and as well as algorithm procedure for interior point method. We consider the optimization of non-convex function subject to linear inequalities constraints. The objective function is minimize over the interior ellipsoids to generate sequence of interior point converging to optimal solution. The decent direction is computed. The second part of this paper contains affine scaling algorithm. This algorithm helps to solve quadratic programming problem resulting from the original problem. The computational complexity of the method is also shown through minimal norm theorem.
Substantiating the Patterns of Geomechanical Factors Influence on the Shear Parameters of the Coal-Overlaying Formation Requiring Degassing at High Advance Rates of Stoping Faces in the Western Donbas

The issues of developing ideas about the mechanism of coal mining from gas fields and two components of providing the country with energy carriers are studied: coal mining and methane utilization from coal-bearing stratum. These issues are inextricably linked with the mining of deposits with high-velocity longwall faces. The actual problem of resolving the above contradictions is studied. The patterns of the geomechanical factors influence based on the finite element method (FEM) modeling of the coal-overlaying formation shear parameters are studied from the point of view of substantiating the location schemes for the site outgassing wells at high advance rates of stoping faces in the Western Donbas. The obtained results of computational experiments are compared with the corresponding studies of specialists. The conclusions about the degree of geomechanical factors influence and the need to take them into account are substantiated. Three calculation models have been developed and substantiated in terms of the shape and size of the calculation zone, the rock mass texture, the mechanical properties of its lithotype, the loading conditions at the model boundaries, the characteristics of the link between stresses and deformations in the model elements, and the criteria for determining the limiting state. The significant influence of the longwall face location depth and the mass texture on the shear parameters of the coal-overlaying formation has been proved. Based on the data of computational experiments, the corresponding dependences and regression equations have been obtained. The conducted research makes it possible to choose appropriate location schemes for outgassing wells.
Recommendations for connecting molecular sequence and biodiversity research infrastructures through ELIXIR

Threats to global biodiversity are increasingly recognised by scientists and the public as a critical challenge. Molecular sequencing technologies offer means to catalogue, explore, and monitor the richness and biogeography of life on Earth. However, exploiting their full potential requires tools that connect biodiversity infrastructures and resources. As a research infrastructure developing services and technical solutions that help integrate and coordinate life science resources across Europe, ELIXIR is a key player. To identify opportunities, highlight priorities, and aid strategic thinking, here we survey approaches by which molecular technologies help inform understanding of biodiversity. We detail example use cases to highlight how DNA sequencing is: resolving taxonomic issues; Increasing knowledge of marine biodiversity; helping understand how agriculture and biodiversity are critically linked; and playing an essential role in ecological studies. Together with examples of national biodiversity programmes, the use cases show where progress is being made but also highlight common challenges and opportunities for future enhancement of underlying technologies and services that connect molecular and wider biodiversity domains. Based on emerging themes, we propose key recommendations to guide future funding for biodiversity research: biodiversity and bioinformatic infrastructures need to collaborate closely and strategically; taxonomic efforts need to be aligned and harmonised across domains; metadata needs to be standardised and common data management approaches widely adopted; current approaches need to be scaled up dramatically to address the anticipated explosion of molecular data; bioinformatics support for biodiversity research needs to be enabled and sustained; training for end users of biodiversity research infrastructures needs to be prioritised; and community initiatives need to be proactive and focused on enabling solutions. For sequencing data to deliver their full potential they must be connected to knowledge: together, molecular sequence data collection initiatives and biodiversity research infrastructures can advance global efforts to prevent further decline of Earth’s biodiversity.
Familial hypercholesterolemia in childhood : diagnostics , therapeutical options and risk stratification

Studies on the clinical consequences of different low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor genotypes in adult patients have yielded conflicting results. We hypothesized that children with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) provide a better model to perform genotype—phenotype analyses than adults. We tested this hypothesis and assessed the effect of LDL receptor genotypes on lipoprotein levels and on parental risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a pediatric FH cohort. We identified 75 different LDL receptor mutations in 645 children with heterozygous FH; in these children, null alleles were clearly associated with more elevated LDL cholesterol levels compared to receptordefective mutations. Familial factors explained 50.4% of the variation in LDL cholesterol levels of this pediatric cohort compared to only 9.5% in adults. Parental CVD risk was not significantly different between carriers of null alleles and receptor-defective mutations (RR, 1.22; 95% CI, 0.76-1.95;/» = 0.4). The N543H/2393del9 mutation was associated with a less deteriorated lipid profile and the parents had less often CVD relative to parents with other mutations (RR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.20-0.78;/ = 0.008). We could confirm that children with FH provide a better model to perform genotype—phenotype analyses. In particular, children with null alleles had significantly more elevated LDL cholesterol levels than carriers of other alleles but this was not associated with higher risk of CVD in the parents. Nonetheless, a specific LDL receptor mutation was associated with less deteriorated lipoprotein levels and a milder CVD risk.
Truncated exponential nonlinearities for independent component analysis

This paper proposes exponential type nonlinearities in order to blindly separate instantaneous mixtures of signals with mixed kurtosis signs. These nonlinear functions are applied only in a certain range around zero in order to ensure that the relative gradient algorithm remains locally stable. The proposed truncated nonlinearities neutralize the effect of outliers while the higher order terms inherently present in the exponential function result in fast convergence especially for signals with bounded support. By varying the truncation threshold, signals with both sub-Gaussian and super-Gaussian probability distributions can be separated. Furthermore, when the sources consist of signals with mixed kurtosis signs we propose to estimate the characteristic function online in order to classify the signals as sub-Gaussian or super-Gaussian and consequently choose an adequate value of the truncation threshold. Some computer simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed idea.
On the Security of a MAC by Mitchell ∗

OMAC is a provably secure MAC scheme proposed by Iwata and Kurosawa [10]. NIST currently intends to specify OMAC as the modes recommendation. In August 2003, Mitchell published a note “On the security of XCBC, TMAC and OMAC” to propose a new variant of OMAC [16]. We call it OMAC1′′. In this paper, we prove that OMAC1′′ is less secure than the original OMAC. We show a security gap between them. As a result, we obtain a negative answer to Mitchell’s open question— OMAC1′′ is not provably secure even if the underlying block cipher is a PRP. Further, we point out limitations of discussion in [16]. key words: message authentication code, OMAC, security proofs, security gap, pseudorandom permutation
Diversity-Stability Dynamics of the Amphibian Skin Microbiome and 1 Susceptibility to a Lethal Viral Pathogen . 2 3

20 Variation among animals in their host-associated microbial communities is increasingly 21 recognised as a key determinant of important life history traits including growth, metabolism 22 and resistance to disease. Quantitative estimates of the factors shaping the stability of host 23 microbiomes over time at the individual level in non-model organisms are scarce. Addressing 24 this gap in our knowledge is important, as variation among individuals in microbiome stability 25 may represent temporal gain or loss of key microbial species and functions linked to host 26 health and/or fitness. Here we use controlled experiments to investigate how both 27 heterogeneity in microbial species richness of the environment and exposure to the emerging 28 pathogen Ranavirus influence the structure and temporal dynamics of the skin microbiome 29 in a vertebrate host, the European common frog (Rana temporaria). Our evidence suggests 30 that altering the bacterial species richness of the environment drives divergent temporal 31 microbiome dynamics of the amphibian skin. Exposure to ranavirus effects changes in skin 32 microbiome structure irrespective of total microbial diversity, but individuals with higher pre33 exposure skin microbiome diversity appeared to exhibit higher survival. Higher diversity skin 34 microbiomes also appear less stable over time compared to lower diversity microbiomes, but 35 stability of the 100 most abundant (‘core’) community members was similar irrespective of 36 microbiome richness. Our study highlights the importance of extrinsic factors in determining 37 the stability of host microbiomes over time, which may in turn have important consequences 38 for the stability of host-microbe interactions and microbiome-fitness correlations. 39 40 41 42
On the Complexity of Properties of Transformation Semigroups

We investigate the computational complexity for determining various properties of a finite transformation semigroup $S$ given by generators. In particular, we show that checking whether an element of $S$ is regular is PSPACE-complete. We give polynomial time algorithms for enumerating left/right identities, finding a left/right zero, checking nilpotence, and checking if a semigroup satisfies a fixed equation.
Factors Associated With Sustained Remission in Rheumatoid Arthritis in Patients Treated With Anti–Tumor Necrosis Factor

Anti–tumor necrosis factor (anti‐TNF) antibody has revolutionized the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and remission is now a realistic possibility for patients. Despite widespread use of anti‐TNFs, predicting which patients are most likely to attain a sustained good response to these treatments remains challenging. Our objective was to undertake a systematic review of the literature to evaluate existing evidence for demographic and clinical factors associated with the achievement of sustained remission in individuals with RA treated with anti‐TNF therapy.
Paleoecological implications of the mineralogy, structure, and strontium and magnesium contents of shells of the west coast species of the genus Mytilus

Large specimens of M. californianus, M. edulis edulis, and M. edulis diegensis show a positive correlation with temperature in the percent aragonite in their shells. Shell thickness and probably other unknown factors also affect the shell mineralogy of M. californianus. Shell size and salinity are the most important factors affecting the mineralogy of M. edulis edulis and M. edulis diegensis. The shell structure of M. californianus is temperature dependent. A method making possible the quantitative determination of paleotemperatures from shell structure is devised. The age of specimens of M. californianus can be determined from shell structure making possible the estimation of growth rates, which are in part a function of temperature. The magnesium and strontium contents of the outer prismatic layer of the west coast species of Mytiles are positively correlated with temperature. The strontium content is affected by the size of the specimen but is independent of salinity in the samples in this study. The strontium content of the nacreous layer shows a negative correlation with temperature. Shell structure, strontium content, shell mineralogy, and growth rates are used to determine paleotemperatures for fossils from four localities in the upper Pleistocene of California and Baja California and one locality in the lower Pleistocene of California. These methods indicate that the temperatures were much like the present temperatures at these localities.
An Exploration of Learning-to-re-rank Using a Two-step Framework for Fair Ranking

As fairness has been attracting increasing attention in search engines, producing both fair and relevant rankings has become a major challenge for many information retrieval systems. In 2022, TREC fair ranking track launched an ad-hoc retrieval task for Wikipedia editors, which returns not only relevant documents of each query but also provides fair exposure to each document. The main goal of our participation in this track is to explore a fairness-aware two-step fair ranking framework using supervised learning-based re-rankers. Given a query, we first retrieve relevant documents and then use the re-ranker to re-rank the documents so that the final ranking is fair evaluated by the attention-weighted rank fairness (AWRF). We utilize the simple yet well-performed BM25 retrieval model to obtain relevant documents of each query. We tested a gradient-boosted tree-based (GBDT) LambdaMART model and a neural-based multilayer perceptron model. To better train the supervised learning models, we also extracted contextual-based features to augment our training data. We encoded fairness through a pre-processing method by constructing fairness scores. Our results also show the possibility of leveraging supervised learning-based re-rankers and contextual features.
Uncovering the essential genome of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum by saturation mutagenesis

Severe malaria is caused by the apicomplexan parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Despite decades of research the unique biology of these parasites has made it challenging to establish high throughput genetic approaches for identification of therapeutic targets. Using transposon mutagenesis of P. falciparum in an approach that exploited its AT-rich genome we generated >38,000 mutants, saturating the genome and defining fitness costs for 95% of genes. Of 5,399 genes we found ~3,000 genes are essential for optimal growth of asexual blood-stages in vitro. Our study defines ∼ 1000 essential genes, including genes associated with drug resistance, vaccine candidates, and conserved proteins of unknown function. We validated this approach by testing proteasome pathways for individual mutants associated with artemisinin sensitivity
The histone-like protein HupB influences biofilm formation and virulence in Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri through the regulation of flagellar biosynthesis

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/mpp.12777 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. DR. MARÍA ROSA MARANO (Orcid ID : 0000-0001-6600-8177) DR. ADRIAN ALBERTO VOJNOV (Orcid ID : 0000-0001-6238-6840)