Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pseudo value method for ultra high-dimensional semiparametric models with life-time data

We develop a new procedure called “pseudo value method” (PVM) that can handle ultra high-dimensional variable selection problems for semiparametric survival models. While there has only been the sure independence screening (SIS)-type strategy for ultra high-dimensional life-time data so far in literature, the new unified methodology covers a much broader class of survival models including general transformation models and the accelerated failure time (AFT) model. The proposed method is versatile because the conversion involved easily casts the current problem of interest into a regular linear regression framework. Through this translation, all the existing and powerful techniques developed for the linear regression problems can be leveraged to tackle the new challenge at almost no extra cost. Numerical performance of PVM has also demonstrated promising results: in addition to outperforming the (iterative) SIS for the Cox model, the new method can also accurately select the effective variables for probit, proportional odds and the AFT models, amongst which, to the best of our knowledge, has been studied under the ultra high-dimensional context on a case-by-case basis. Our unified Statistica Sinica: Newly accepted Paper (accepted version subject to English editing)
The Effect of MV-II-065 on The Phagocytosis of Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus is a major source of many clinical problems and is associated with an increase in the cost of health care. The bacteria’s ability to be resistant to antibiotics remains ever constant. S.aureus’ cell wall is composed of a capsule that hinders the human body’s immune system by preventing phagocytosis of the bacteria. The ineffectiveness of antibiotics and the body’s immune system creates the need for alternative methods of treatment for S.aureus infections. A potential alternative form of treatment involves the use of mimetics, modified capsular carbohydrates. The goal of these studies was to test the ability of a mimetic, MV-II-065, to block the synthesis of S. aureus capsule. To ascertain the effectiveness of the mimetics, they were administered in different concentrations and incubated with S.aureus overnight. A decrease in capsule production (26% of solvent control) was indicated by decreased binding of monoclonal antibodies to the bacteria during an ELISA assay. Results of phagocytosis assays were variable, however the mimetics had no effect on bacterial growth rates. Colony counts were performed on bacteria treated with mimetics. These studies demonstrated that incubation with the MV-II-065 altered the light absorbance of the bacteria. Bacteria concentrations standardized by absorbance at 550 nm gave falsely low values in bacteria treated with the mimetics, resulting in higher numbers of bacteria in mimetic treated populations compared to controls. In future studies examining the functional effect of MV-II-065, the bacterial concentrations will have to be verified using colony counts prior to performing phagocytosis assays.
Characterising influences on safety culture in military aviation:a methodologically grounded approach

Historically, much effort has been expended in safety culture / climate research toward identifying a generic core set of components, predominately using the self-administered questionnaire approach. However, no stable unified model has emerged, and much of this research has taken a methodologically top-down approach to depicting organisational safety culture. In light of this, the benefits of qualitative exploration as a precursor to and foundation for the development of quantitative climate measures are increasingly recognised. When grounded in the viewpoint of employees, qualitative data driven techniques can provide an insight into how those within an organisation make sense of their work environment and how this impacts their understanding of safety. The current research aimed to address issues of ecological validity by using a qualitative approach to exploring and characterising military aviation employee perspectives on safety culture and risk taking prior to development of a quantitative measurement tool. A thematic analysis of twelve focus groups (N=89),conducted with military employees in a semi-structured manner, was undertaken. This insight into how these personnel interpret their working world was characterised by six nameable constructs: 1. Policy and procedures, 2. Pressure, 3. Management ownership of safety, 4. Individual responsibility and risk perception, 5. Communication and 6. Organisational commitment. Interpretation of these constructs and implications for the future development of a quantitative measurment tool are discussed.
Non-Gaussianity and Statistical Anisotropy from Vector Field Populated Inflationary Models

We present a review of vector field models of inflation and, in particular, of the statistical anisotropy and non-Gaussianity predictions of models with SU(2) vector multiplets. Non-Abelian gauge groups introduce a richer amount of predictions compared to the Abelian ones, mostly because of the presence of vector fields self-interactions. Primordial vector fields can violate isotropy leaving their imprint in the comoving curvature fluctuations 𝜁 at late times. We provide the analytic expressions of the correlation functions of 𝜁 up to fourth order and an analysis of their amplitudes and shapes. The statistical anisotropy signatures expected in these models are important and, potentially, the anisotropic contributions to the bispectrum and the trispectrum can overcome the isotropic parts.
The astrocytic cytoskeleton: Unravelling the role of GFAPδ

Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is the main intermediate filament (IF) in astrocytes. The GFAP gene can give rise to different splice isoforms, of which GFAPα is the canonical isoform. GFAPδ is an isoform which in the human SVZ is expressed in specific astrocytes; the adult neural stem cells. Expression differences between these isoforms lead to the hypothesis that GFAPδ may play a functional role in specific subtypes of astrocytes. In overexpression studies, we investigated the effects of GFAP isoform expression on the IF network and functional features of neurogenic astrocytes. We confirmed that GFAPδ expression collapses the GFAP network which altered cell morphology but not motility or proliferation rate. Since there is a constant exchange of proteins from an insoluble form to soluble form in the cytoplasm we assessed the dynamic properties of GFAPα and GFAPδ. The exchange rate of GFAPδ was lower compared to GFAPα and the exchange rates of both isoforms were decreased in a collapsed IF network. A role for GFAPδ in both cell motility and cell adhesion was found in experiments where the endogenous GFAP isoform levels were altered with specific isoform knockdown. Moreover, the expression levels of integrins, plectin and Laminin1a were regulated in cells with a high GFAPδ:GFAPɑ ratio. The molecular mechanisms underlying the influence of GFAPδ on cell motility, adhesion, and extracellular matrix (ECM) related protein expression is still unknown. Future research should focus on the link between the IF network, the ECM, integrin signalling and the role of GFAPδ therein.
Adhesion and wear behavior of nanostructured titanium oxide thin films

This study aims to investigate structural, mechanical and tribological properties of titanium oxide films deposited on glass substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. All the as-grown titania films possess the anatase structure having a grain size of about 44 nm irrespective of the variation of substrate temperatures. AFM images show a nodular morphology with an increase of surface roughness. From micro-scratch tests, the optical micrographs of the scratch tracks show that the complete delamination of TiO2 films deposited at higher temperatures appear at a higher value of adhesion critical loads. The highest adhesion critical load between titanium oxide films and glass was found to be 2.24 N for the film prepared at 300 C. It represents an enhanced adhesion strength for films deposited at higher temperatures. Scratch hardness was also found to increase from 5.5 to 8.4 GPa with increasing substrate temperature. From micro-wear test, it is found that the wear resistance of TiO2 films deposited at higher substrate temperatures exhibits higher wear resistance.
A Formal Model for Human Robot Collaboration using Hybrid Conditional Planning

Conditional planning aims to find a tree of deterministic actuation actions and nondeterministic sensing actions, and thus offers a solution for planning under uncertainty. Hybrid conditional planning (HCP) embeds geometric reasoning into descriptions of these actions. We propose to extend the use of HCP to model human-robot collaborations in robotic domains, by formally modeling communication actions and by embedding common sense knowledge into their descriptions. Some communication actions, like requesting humans to perform some action, initiating/ending conversations and providing explanations are formalized as deterministic actions. Some communication actions, like asking for confirmation/help, that require some answers/feedback from humans are modeled as nondeterministic actions. We show an application of this approach over a collaborative assembly planning scenario.
Making It “Facebook Official”: Reflecting on Romantic Relationships Through Sustained Facebook Use

For the past 12 years, Facebook has played a significant role in mediating the lives of its users. Disclosures on the site go on to serve as intimate, co-constructed life records, albeit with unique and always-evolving affordances. The ways in which romantic relationships are mediated on the site are complex and contested: “What is the significance of articulating a romantic relationship on Facebook? ” “Why do some choose to make socially and culturally critical moments like the beginning and ends of relationships visible on Facebook, whereas others (perhaps within the same relationship) do not? ” “How do these practices change over time? ” and “When is it time to go “Facebook official”? ” In this article, we draw on qualitative research with Facebook users in their 20s in Australia and the United Kingdom who have been using the site for 5 years or more. Interviews with participants revealed that romantic relationships were central to many of their growing up narratives, and in this article, we draw out examples to discuss four kinds of (non-exclusive) practices: (1) overt relationship status disclosures, mediated through the “relationship status” affordance of the site, (2) implied relationship disclosures, mediated through an increase in images and tags featuring romantic partners, (3) the intended absence of relationship visibility, and (4) later-erased or revised relationship disclosures. We also critique the ways in which Facebook might work to produce normative “relationship traces,” privileging neat linearity, monogamy, and obfuscating (perhaps usefully, perhaps not) the messy complexity of romantic relationships.
High CD 133 Expression in the Nucleus and Cytoplasm Predicts Poor Prognosis in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Objective. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of Prominin-1 (CD133) in cancer cells and its potential value as a prognostic indicator of survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods. Cancerous tissues and matched normal tissues adjacent to the carcinoma from 239 NSCLC patients were obtained immediately after surgery. Immunohistochemistry of tissuemicroarrayswas used to characterize the expression ofCD133 inNSCLCand adjacent tissues.The correlation ofCD133 expressionwith clinical characteristics and prognosis was determined by statistical analysis.Results. CD133 protein expression levels in both the cytoplasm and nucleus were significantly higher in NSCLC tissues compared with corresponding peritumoral tissue (P < 0.05). CD133 expression in the nucleus of NSCLC cells was related to tumor diameter (P = 0.027), tumor differentiation (P < 0.001), and TNM stage (P = 0.007). Kaplan-Meier survival and Cox regression analyses revealed that high CD133 expression in the nucleus was an independent predictor of poor prognosis of NSCLC, as was high cytoplasmic CD133 expression (P < 0.001). Conclusion. Our findings provide the first evidence that high expression of CD133 in both the nucleus and cytoplasm is associated with poor prognosis in NSCLC.
Glutamine addiction : A fatal ignorance in prescription of glutamine supplementation

Glutamine is a functional amino acid [1] that constituted 20% of free amino acid in circulating biological fluids and more than 50% of the amino acids in skeletal muscles. It is essential for the growth and the survival of physiologically and rapidly dividing cells particularly the enterocyte. It maintains the gut barrier function and prevents the permeability of toxins and pathogens in the gut. As glutamine is required for the protein synthesis, it involves in many functional processes in organs and tissues of the gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and immune systems. Its effect on the protein building blocks is mediated by stimulation the phosphorylation of mammalian target of rapamycin-1 (mTOR1). In addition, it increases the gene expression of antioxidants and inhibits the expression of certain cytokines in organs and tissues such as gut and adipose tissue.
PRICE SPIKES REDUCTION WITH EDRP PROGRAM

With the development of deregulated power systems and increase of prices in some hours of day and increase fuel price, demand response programs were noticed more by customers. demand response consists of a series of activities that governments or utilities design to change the amount or time of electric energy consumption, to achieve better social welfare or some times for maximizing the benefits of utilities or consumers. In this paper we try to evaluate the effect of DR programs especially EDRP on Nodal Marginal Pricing spikes reduction of Restructured Power Systems while occurs events. In order to reach to this target, EDRP program (Emergency Demand Response Program), as common demand response program, is considered. Effects of EDRP program on Nodal Marginal Pricing spikes and operation cost reduction of Restructured Power Systems are investigated using EDRP and economic load model, AC-OPF Formulation and nodal marginal price evaluation techniques. The IEEE 9 bus Test System is used to implement comparisons of impacts with and without EDRP activity on nodal marginal pricing spikes and operation cost reduction. According to obtained results, EDRP using lead to volatility decrease in local marginal price (LMP). It can be said that solving problems such as congestion in transmission lines, power system reliability decrease and volatility decrease in local marginal price at load network peak hours, is impossible without customer interfering in power market. In other hand Consumer participation, makes the power markets more competition and enhance its performance.
Discrimination of Vowel-Harmonic vs Vowel-Disharmonic Words by Monolingual Turkish Infants in the First Year of Life

Previous longitudinal research has revealed a familiarity-to-novelty shift in monolingual Turkish infants’ preference to listen to vowel-harmonic vs voweldisharmonic words: 6-month-olds prefer listening to harmonic over disharmonic words but 10-months-olds prefer listening to disharmonic over harmonic words (Altan, Kaya, & Hohenberger, 2016; Hohenberger, Altan, Kaya, Köksal Tuncer, & Avcu, 2016). This effect was strong for backness harmony but weak for rounding harmony. In order to find out whether Turkish infants in their first year of life distinguish not only stimuli from backness but also rounding harmony, we used a more sensitive measure in the present study: habituation and discrimination. The organization of this article is as follows: the first section provides a definition of vowel harmony and summarizes previous work on vowel harmony and its acquisition. In section 2 the method of our discrimination experiment is outlined. Section 3 presents our findings which are discussed in section 4, followed by a conclusion in section 5.
Feasibility studies of the decay B 0 → K 0 ∗ ( 892 ) τ + τ − at LHCb

In this thesis, sensitivity studies of the deday mode B → K∗(892)τ+τ−, with both taus reconstructed from πππντ , at LHCb are performed. This analysis is based on data samples corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1 fb−1 for background, respectively 1.5 million monte carlo simulated events for signal, which are used as reference to extrapolate for expected luminosities for Run2 and LHCb upgrade. The results of this study indicate that the first observation of this mode at LHCb in a near future is unlikely with the current setup.
Experimental study of relationship between interfacial electroadhesive force and applied voltage for different substrate materials

An experimental investigation into the relationship between the interfacial electroadhesive force and applied voltage up to 20 kV has been presented. Normal electroadhesive forces have been obtained between a double-electrode electroadhesive pad and three optically flat and different substrate materials: glass, acrylic, and polycarbonate. The results have shown that not all substrate materials are good for the generation of electroadhesive forces. Only 15.7 Pa has been obtained between the pad and the polycarbonate substrate under 20 kV, whereas 46.3 Pa and 123.4 Pa have been obtained on the acrylic and glass substrate, respectively. Based on the experimental data, empirical models, with an adjusted R-square value above 0.995 in all cases, have been obtained for the three substrates. However, it has not been possible to develop a general empirical model which is suitable for all substrates. This further indicates the need for a large quantity of experimental data to obtain robust empirical models for diff.
A longitudinal study of audiovisual speech perception by hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants

The present study investigated the development of audiovisual speech perception skills in children who are prelingually deaf and received cochlear implants. We analyzed results from the Pediatric Speech Intelligibility (Jerger, Lewis, Hawkins, & Jerger, 1980) test of audiovisual spoken word and sentence recognition skills obtained from a large group of young children with cochlear implants enrolled in a longitudinal study, from pre-implantation to 3 years post-implantation. The results revealed better performance under the audiovisual presentation condition compared with auditory-alone and visual-alone conditions. Performance in all three conditions improved over time following implantation. The results also revealed differential effects of early sensory and linguistic experience. Children from oral communication (OC) education backgrounds performed better overall than children from total communication (TC backgrounds. Finally, children in the early-implanted group performed better than children in the late-implanted group in the auditoryalone presentation condition after 2 years of cochlear implant use, whereas children in the lateimplanted group performed better than children in the early-implanted group in the visual-alone condition. The results of the present study suggest that measures of audiovisual speech perception may provide new methods to assess hearing, speech, and language development in young children with cochlear implants.
MODIFIED COMPOSITE GUIDANCE LAW AGAINST MOVING TARGET CONSIDERING NARROW FIELD-OF-VIEW LIMIT

A missile guidance law is proposed to intercept a non-maneuvering target considering seeker’s field-of-view limit . The guidance law is based on the composite structure consisting of look-angle control and pure proportional navigation. The composite guidance law is modified to make the guidance law applicable to air-to-air engagement. Command of the look angle is properly corrected to achieve specified impact angle effectively. Numerical simulation is performed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
Chinese Stock Index Futures Price Fluctuation Analysis and Prediction Based on Complementary Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition

Since the CSI 300 index futures officially began trading on April 15, 2010, analysis and predictions of the price fluctuations of Chinese stock index futures prices have become a popular area of active research. In this paper, the Complementary Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) method is used to decompose the sequences of Chinese stock index futures prices into residue terms, low-frequency terms, and high-frequency terms to reveal the fluctuation characteristics over different time scales of the sequences. Then, the CEEMD method is combined with the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm-based Support Vector Machine (SVM) model to forecast Chinese stock index futures prices. The empirical results show that the residue term determines the long-term trend of stock index futures prices. The low-frequency term, which represents medium-term price fluctuations, is mainly affected by policy regulations under the analysis of the Iterated Cumulative Sums of Squares (ICSS) algorithm, whereas short-term market disequilibrium, which is represented by the high-frequency term, plays an important local role in stock index futures price fluctuations. In addition, in forecasting the daily or even intraday price data of Chinese stock index futures, the combination prediction model is superior to the single SVM model, which implies that the accuracy of predicting Chinese stock index futures prices will be improved by considering fluctuation characteristics in different time scales.
The influence of the occupational context on employees’ engagement

Engagement was first theorised by Kahn (1990, p.700) to describe ‘the simultaneous employment and expression of a person’s "preferred self" in task behaviours that promote connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical, cognitive, and emotional), and active, full role performances’. Engagement is argued, and evidenced, to be important for facilitating high levels of performance, wellbeing and health, particularly during challenging times (Schaufeli, 2014). Thus, it is a relevant topic for discussion on resilience in a challenging world.
Estimation of Import Demand for Fishery Products in the U.S. Using the Source-Differentiated AIDS Model

Fishery product imports by the U.S. have been gradually increasing in recent years. The leading exporting countries include Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. A source-differentiated Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model and its Error Correction Model (ECM) version are employed to investigate the static and dynamic U.S. import demand for fishery products from the top seven countries using monthly data from January 1999 to September 2012. Long-run and short-run own-price, cross-price and expenditure elasticities are calculated.