Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Changing Contours of "Participation" in Data-driven, Algorithmic Ecosystems: Challenges, Tactics, and an Agenda

Contributing to a growing attention to algorithms and algorithmic interaction in the CHI and CSCW communities, this workshop aims to deal centrally with the topic of human "participation" and its changing role to data-driven, algorithmic ecosystems. Such a focus includes projects that involve users in the design of algorithms and "human-in-the-loop" systems, broader investigations into the ways in which "participation" is situated in data-driven activities, as well as conceptual concerns about participation's changing contours in contemporary social computing landscapes. This one- day workshop will be led by academic and industry researchers and sets out to achieve three goals: identify cases and ongoing projects on the topic of participation in algorithmic ecosystems; create a tactical toolkit of key challenges and strategies in this space; and set a forward-facing agenda to provoke further attention to the changing role of participation in contemporary sociotechnical systems.
Soil fertility and flood regime are correlated with phylogenetic structure of Amazonian palm communities

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Identifying the processes that generate and maintain biodiversity requires understanding of how evolutionary processes interact with abiotic conditions to structure communities. Edaphic gradients are strongly associated with floristic patterns but, compared with climatic gradients, have received relatively little attention. We asked (1) How does the phylogenetic composition of palm communities vary along edaphic gradients within major habitat types? and (2) To what extent are phylogenetic patterns determined by (a) habitat specialists, (b) small versus large palms, and (c) hyperdiverse genera? METHODS We paired data on palm community composition from 501 transects of 0.25 ha located in two main habitat types (non-inundated uplands and seasonally inundated floodplains) in western Amazonian rain forests with information on soil chemistry, climate, phylogeny and metrics of plant size. We focused on exchangeable base concentration (cmol+ kg-1) as a metric of soil fertility and a floristic index of inundation intensity. We used a null model approach to quantify the standard effect size of mean phylogenetic distance for each transect (a metric of phylogenetic community composition) and related this value to edaphic variables using generalized linear mixed models, including a term for spatial autocorrelation. KEY RESULTS Overall, we recorded 112 008 individuals belonging to 110 species. Palm communities in non-inundated upland transects (but not floodplain transects) were more phylogenetically clustered in areas of low soil fertility, measured as exchangeable base concentration. In contrast, floodplain transects with more severe flood regimes (as inferred from floristic structure) tended to be phylogenetically clustered. Nearly half of the species recorded (44 %) were upland specialists while 18 % were floodplain specialists. In both habitat types, phylogenetic clustering was largely due to the co-occurrence of small-sized habitat specialists belonging to two hyperdiverse genera (Bactris and Geonoma). CONCLUSIONS Edaphic conditions are associated with the phylogenetic community structure of palms across western Amazonia, and different factors (specifically, soil fertility and inundation intensity) appear to underlie diversity patterns in non-inundated upland versus floodplain habitats. By linking edaphic gradients with palm community phylogenetic structure, our study reinforces the need to integrate edaphic conditions in eco-evolutionary studies in order to better understand the processes that generate and maintain tropical forest diversity. Our results suggest a role for edaphic niche conservatism in the evolution and distribution of Amazonian palms, a finding with potential relevance for other clades.
Learning Contextual Hierarchical Structure of Medical Concepts with Poincairé Embeddings to Clarify Phenotypes

Biomedical association studies are increasingly done using clinical concepts, and in particular diagnostic codes from clinical data repositories as phenotypes. Clinical concepts can be represented in a meaningful, vector space using word embedding models. These embeddings allow for comparison between clinical concepts or for straightforward input to machine learning models. Using traditional approaches, good representations require high dimensionality, making downstream tasks such as visualization more difficult. We applied Poincaré embeddings in a 2-dimensional hyperbolic space to a large-scale administrative claims database and show performance comparable to 100-dimensional embeddings in a euclidean space. We then examine disease relationships under different disease contexts to better understand potential phenotypes.
Natural Antispasmodics: Source, Stereochemical Configuration, and Biological Activity

Natural products with antispasmodic activity have been used in traditional medicine to alleviate different illnesses since the remote past. We searched the literature and compiled the antispasmodic activity of 248 natural compounds isolated from terrestrial plants. In this review, we summarized all the natural products reported with antispasmodic activity until the end of 2017. We also provided chemical information about their extraction as well as the model used to test their activities. Results showed that members of the Lamiaceae and Asteraceae families had the highest number of isolated compounds with antispasmodic activity. Moreover, monoterpenoids, flavonoids, triterpenes, and alkaloids were the chemical groups with the highest number of antispasmodic compounds. Lastly, a structural comparison of natural versus synthetic compounds was discussed.
Measuring Software Performance on Linux

Measuring and analyzing the performance of software has reached a high complexity, caused by more advanced processor designs and the intricate interaction between user programs, the operating system, and the processor's microarchitecture. In this report, we summarize our experience about how performance characteristics of software should be measured when running on a Linux operating system and a modern processor. In particular, (1) We provide a general overview about hardware and operating system features that may have a significant impact on timing and how they interact, (2) we identify sources of errors that need to be controlled in order to obtain unbiased measurement results, and (3) we propose a measurement setup for Linux to minimize errors. Although not the focus of this report, we describe the measurement process using hardware performance counters, which can faithfully reflect the real bottlenecks on a given processor. Our experiments confirm that our measurement setup has a large impact on the results. More surprisingly, however, they also suggest that the setup can be negligible for certain analysis methods. Furthermore, we found that our setup maintains significantly better performance under background load conditions, which means it can be used to improve software in high-performance applications.
On the Evaluation of Common-Sense Reasoning in Natural Language Understanding

The NLP and ML communities have long been interested in developing models capable of common-sense reasoning, and recent works have significantly improved the state of the art on benchmarks like the Winograd Schema Challenge (WSC). Despite these advances, the complexity of tasks designed to test common-sense reasoning remains under-analyzed. In this paper, we make a case study of the Winograd Schema Challenge and, based on two new measures of instance-level complexity, design a protocol that both clarifies and qualifies the results of previous work. Our protocol accounts for the WSC's limited size and variable instance difficulty, properties common to other common-sense benchmarks. Accounting for these properties when assessing model results may prevent unjustified conclusions.
Jumping to conclusions at first onset of psychosis predicts longer admissions, more compulsory admissions and police involvement over the next 4 years: the GAP study

Abstract Background Jumping to conclusions (JTC), which is the proneness to require less information before forming beliefs or making a decision, has been related to formation and maintenance of delusions. Using data from the National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Centre Genetics and Psychosis (GAP) case–control study of first-episode psychosis (FEP), we set out to test whether the presence of JTC would predict poor clinical outcome at 4 years. Methods One-hundred and twenty-three FEP patients were assessed with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) and the probabilistic reasoning ‘Beads’ Task at the time of recruitment. The sample was split into two groups based on the presence of JTC bias. Follow-up data over an average of 4 years were obtained concerning clinical course and outcomes (remission, intervention of police, use of involuntary treatment – the Mental Health Act (MHA) – and inpatient days). Results FEP who presented JTC at baseline were more likely during the follow-up period to be detained under the MHA [adjusted OR 15.62, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.92–83.54, p = 0.001], require intervention by the police (adjusted OR 14.95, 95% CI 2.68–83.34, p = 0.002) and have longer admissions (adjusted IRR = 5.03, 95% CI 1.91–13.24, p = 0.001). These associations were not accounted for by socio-demographic variables, IQ and symptom dimensions. Conclusions JTC in FEP is associated with poorer outcome as indicated and defined by more compulsion police intervention and longer periods of admission. Our findings raise the question of whether the implementation of specific interventions to reduce JTC, such as Metacognition Training, may be a useful addition in early psychosis intervention programmes.
A novel approach for preventing recurrence of malign pleural effusion: early phase pleurodesis

Introduction The effective control of malignant pleural effusion (MPE) is of paramount importance in the treatment of patients with disseminated cancer. In this study, we compared two different approaches (early pleurodesis versus late pleurodesis) to MPE. Material and methods Patients (188 cases) whose primary tumor type was known and who were confirmed to have MPE, were included in the study and were separated into two groups. One group consisted of patients who were asymptomatic and who underwent early phase pleurodesis (group I, n = 79). The other group (group II, n = 109) was composed of patients who were symptomatic and whose pleurodesis was performed later. In all cases, pleural effusion was evaluated by means of direct radiography. Computed tomography was performed with the goal of confirming the parenchymal or mediastinal lesions accompanying the pleural fluid. Results The rate of complete success in group I cases was observed to be higher, while the rate of recurrence was lower (p = 0.001 and p = 0.002, respectively) than group II. In multiple logistic regression analysis, co-morbidities and the group that patient belong were found to be significant in terms of pleurodesis success (p = 0.02 and p = 0.03). There was a significant difference in survival time between group I and group II, with group I exhibiting longer average survival time (log rank test p < 0.001). Conclusions We observed that the success rate was lower and the rate of recurrence higher in the late pleurodesis group, whose members already had greater volumes of pleural effusion.
Non-Markovian intracellular transport with sub-diffusion and run-length dependent detachment rate

Intracellular transport of organelles is fundamental to cell function and health. The mounting evidence suggests that this transport is in fact anomalous. However, the reasons for the anomaly is still under debate. We examined experimental trajectories of organelles inside a living cell and propose a mathematical model that describes the previously reported transition from sub-diffusive to super-diffusive motion. In order to explain super-diffusive behaviour at long times, we introduce non-Markovian detachment kinetics of the cargo: the rate of detachment is inversely proportional to the time since the last attachment. Recently, we observed the non-Markovian detachment rate experimentally in eukaryotic cells. Here we further discuss different scenarios of how this effective non-Markovian detachment rate could arise. The non-Markovian model is successful in simultaneously describing the time averaged variance (the time averaged mean squared displacement corrected for directed motion), the mean first passage time of trajectories and the multiple peaks observed in the distributions of cargo velocities. We argue that non-Markovian kinetics could be biologically beneficial compared to the Markovian kinetics commonly used for modelling, by increasing the average distance the cargoes travel when a microtubule is blocked by other filaments. In turn, sub-diffusion allows cargoes to reach neighbouring filaments with higher probability, which promotes active motion along the microtubules.
Reporting effective extraction methodology and chemical characterization of bioactive components of under explored Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco from semi-arid climate

Abstract The bioactive ingredients of many essential oils are complex and difficult to reproduce synthetically. In the present study, the influence of extraction method on relative extraction of bioactive compounds of essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco (Thuja orientalis L. is a synonym of it) leaves gathered from semi-arid climate was studied. A higher yield of essential oil was obtained by hydrodistillation (0.1%) as compared to steam distillation (0.07%) under newly optimized conditions. Initial analysis of these oils by TLC showed the presence of different polarity groups ranging from non-polar terpene hydrocarbons to polar terpenoid alcohols. GC-MS analysis revealed that major component of hydrodistilled essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco leaves was α-pinene (17.83%) and steam distilled essential oil contained α-cedrol (12.44%). The results obtained in the present study emphasize that suitable extraction technique should be used to obtain particular component of interest.
A personalized approach to long QT syndrome

Purpose of review Our purpose is to provide an update on the new clinical and genetic aspects of long QT syndrome (LQTS). LQTS is the most common channelopathy and a cause of syncope and sudden death in the young. Although there are 17 types of LQTS, most patients have types 1 or 2 which are due to mutations in KCNQ1 and KCNH2 (encoding for the cardiac potassium channels), and type 3 which is due to a mutation in SCN5A (encoding for the sodium channel). LQTS is characterized by incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity. Significant data exist concerning the common types of LQTS and include mutational location, biophysical function, gene-specific triggers, and disease modifiers that are known and help characterize the disease. Recent findings Recent studies support the use of &bgr;-blockers in LQTS. Nadolol and propranolol are superior likely because of their sodium channel blocking effects. There are recent data supporting the use of &bgr;-blockers in LQTS type 3 in which their use was once discouraged. There are increasing data that left cardiac sympathetic denervation is effective in LQTS and should be considered before an implantable cardioverter defibrillator is implanted. Summary LQTS is a model for effective collaboration between clinicians and basic scientists and between cardiologists and geneticists. Recent advances in the derivation of induced pluripotent stem cells from LQTS patients and creation of genetically engineered human models using clusters of regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) will advance translational arrhythmia research and move us toward the goal of personalized medicine.
A machine learning ensemble to predict treatment outcomes following an Internet intervention for depression

Abstract Background Some Internet interventions are regarded as effective treatments for adult depression, but less is known about who responds to this form of treatment. Method An elastic net and random forest were trained to predict depression symptoms and related disability after an 8-week course of an Internet intervention, Deprexis, involving adults (N = 283) from across the USA. Candidate predictors included psychopathology, demographics, treatment expectancies, treatment usage, and environmental context obtained from population databases. Model performance was evaluated using predictive R2 $\lpar R_{{\rm pred}}^2\rpar\comma $ the expected variance explained in a new sample, estimated by 10 repetitions of 10-fold cross-validation. Results An ensemble model was created by averaging the predictions of the elastic net and random forest. Model performance was compared with a benchmark linear autoregressive model that predicted each outcome using only its baseline. The ensemble predicted more variance in post-treatment depression (8.0% gain, 95% CI 0.8–15; total $R_{{\rm pred}}^2 \; $= 0.25), disability (5.0% gain, 95% CI −0.3 to 10; total $R_{{\rm pred}}^2 \; $= 0.25), and well-being (11.6% gain, 95% CI 4.9–19; total $R_{{\rm pred}}^2 \; $= 0.29) than the benchmark model. Important predictors included comorbid psychopathology, particularly total psychopathology and dysthymia, low symptom-related disability, treatment credibility, lower access to therapists, and time spent using certain Deprexis modules. Conclusion A number of variables predict symptom improvement following an Internet intervention, but each of these variables makes relatively small contributions. Machine learning ensembles may be a promising statistical approach for identifying the cumulative contribution of many weak predictors to psychosocial depression treatment response.
A review of reviews: Sedentary behaviour and cardiovascular disease specific to older people

BACKGROUND The incidence of sedentary behaviour and cardiovascular disease impacts the health of older people, potentially leading to serious and negative health consequences. AIM The purpose of this umbrella review was to identify the systematic reviews that explore the association between sedentary behaviour and cardiovascular disease specific to older people. METHODS An umbrella review was undertaken to systematically search five databases. Papers included were published between 2011 and 2015. RESULTS A search yielded 2,163 results. Six reviews met the inclusion criteria. While all six systematic reviews included older people in the overall sample, only one systematic review focused on an entirely older person population. Three of the six systematic reviews provided a meta-analysis, but none of the reviews reported a separate subgroup analysis for a discrete sample of older people CONCLUSION: This umbrella review demonstrates that while sedentary behaviour is associated with cardiovascular disease, a gap exists in the analysis on the relationship specific to older persons. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Interventions aimed at reducing sedentary behaviour may improve cardiovascular health and well-being among older people.
Opinions on a Firearm Prohibition Policy That Targets Intimate Partner Violence

Firearms and intimate partner violence form a nexus of dangerousness and lethality. But, some policies aim to separate the two phenomena. The present study aims to fill a gap in the literature focusing on opinions toward a firearm prohibition for persons with injunctions for protection in effect against them by analyzing data from a convenience sample of 290 undergraduate students at a large research university in Florida, United States. Overall, any agreement with the policy was high. Multivariate analyses indicated that females/women and gender identity minorities, together, tended to express more agreement with firearm prohibition than males/men. Multivariate analysis also showed that participants who experienced sexual violence also displayed more agreement with the prohibition when compared to individuals who did not experience sexual violence victimization. “Lower” severity sexual violence victimization had the strongest relationship with policy opinions. Possible explanations for the gender difference in opinions include the implications of hegemonic masculinity and power differentials among genders. A possible explanation for the relationship between sexual violence victimization and policy opinions includes empathy. Policy implications and directions for future research include investigating the potential relationship gap in firearm prohibitions within Florida, engaging college men to change the conceptions around firearms through educational intervention, harnessing the tech-savvy power that college students have to generate awareness of policies, and considering interconnections among opinions, polyvictimization, and firearm policies.
Coreference and Coherence in Neural Machine Translation: A Study Using Oracle Experiments

Cross-sentence context can provide valuable information in Machine Translation and is critical for translation of anaphoric pronouns and for providing consistent translations. In this paper, we devise simple oracle experiments targeting coreference and coherence. Oracles are an easy way to evaluate the effect of different discourse-level phenomena in NMT using BLEU and eliminate the necessity to manually define challenge sets for this purpose. We propose two context-aware NMT models and compare them against models working on a concatenation of consecutive sentences. Concatenation models perform better, but are computationally expensive. We show that NMT models taking advantage of context oracle signals can achieve considerable gains in BLEU, of up to 7.02 BLEU for coreference and 1.89 BLEU for coherence on subtitles translation. Access to strong signals allows us to make clear comparisons between context-aware models.
A Miniaturized Dielectric-Resonator Phased Antenna Array with 3D-Coverage for 5G Mobile Terminals

This paper presents a miniaturized Dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) array of 3D-coverage for the 5G mobile terminal applications. To realize 3D-coverage beam scan with a less linear array, two subarrays are used which are placed at both ends of the substrate, respectively. Here, one subarray has 8 antenna elements and works as a phased array, and then these two subarrays are responsible for radiation on two different regions, which are vertical with the substrate. And each antenna element is a miniaturized DRA whose size is reduced to be the half of the size of the original antenna by loading the metal sheet. The simulated results show that the proposed design covers over 5 GHz bandwidth in the band of 26 GHz, and the subarray has stable gain and good directivity, and as well realizes 3D-coverage.