Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-target-specific Node Injection Attacks on Graph Neural Networks: A Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Approach

Graph Neural Networks have achieved immense success for node classification with its power to explore the topological structure in graph data across many domains including social media, E-commerce, and FinTech. However, recent studies show that GNNs are vulnerable to attacks aimed at adversely impacting their performance, e.g., on the node classification task. Existing studies of adversarial attacks on GNN focus primarily on manipulating the connectivity between existing nodes, a task that requires greater effort on the part of the attacker in real-world applications. In contrast, it is much more expedient on the part of the attacker to inject adversarial nodes, e.g., fake profiles with forged links, into existing graphs so as to reduce the performance of the GNN in classifying existing nodes. Hence, we consider a novel form of node injection poisoning attacks on graph data. We model the key steps of a node injection attack, e.g., establishing links between the injected adversarial nodes and other nodes, choosing the label of an injected node, etc. by a Markov Decision Process. We propose a novel reinforcement learning method for Node Injection Poisoning Attacks (NIPA), to sequentially modify the labels and links of the injected nodes, without changing the connectivity between existing nodes . Specifically, we introduce a hierarchical Q-learning network to manipulate the labels of the adversarial nodes and their links with other nodes in the graph, and design an appropriate reward function to guide the reinforcement learning agent to reduce the node classification performance of GNN. The results of our experiments show that NIPA is consistently more effective than the baseline node injection attack methods for poisoning graph data used to train GNN on several benchmark data sets. We further show that the graphs poisoned by NIPA are statistically similar to the original (clean) graphs, thus enabling the attacks to evade detection.
REU Summer Project A Mathematical Model of Tumor Growth and Angiogenesis

In the summer of 2009, I worked with Dr. Xiaoming Zheng to study a mathematical model of tumor growth and angiogenesis. First I learned the tumor growth model and angiogenesis model. Then I derived a quasisteady state model of the kinetics between Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) and endothelial cell (EC), which plays a central role in the interaction of tumor growth and neovascularization. My future work would be performing numerical investigations of anti-VEGF therapy to tumors. In this report, I will summarize what I have learned and what I have worked in this summer project. First I will briefly decribe the tumor growth model and angiogenesis model in two separate sections. Afterwards, I will present the derivation of VEGF-EC kinetics.
Full recovery in first-episode schizophrenia

Article history: Received 18 August 2016 Received in revised form 21 February 2017 Accepted 2 March 2017 Available online 14 March 2017 Although cognitive impairments are consistently linked to functional outcome in chronic schizophrenia, the relationship remains unclear for patients with first-episode schizophrenia. The objective of this present study was to determine whether there are distinct developmental trajectories for functional outcome in patients with different levels of baseline cognition. The present study has a multi-follow-up design, and includes data from six follow-ups over four years. Assessments were conducted yearly, apart from the first year where assessments were conducted every six months. A total of 28 patients with first-episode schizophrenia participated in the study, with 79% of patients retained at the 4-year follow-up. Cognition was assessed with MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery. Functional outcomes were obtained through Global functioning: Social and Global functioning: Role. Data were analyzed with linear multilevel models. Results suggest steady improvements in social and role functioning among the patients across the four year period. Baseline attention, verbal learning, and verbalworkingmemorywere significantly associatedwith social outcome. Role functioningwas significantly associated with attention, verbal working memory, and reasoning/problem solving. Furthermore, the rate of change in social outcome varies among patients depending on their baseline level of attention and verbal working memory, with the lowest scoring group showing the least improvement over the years. The subgroup of patients with the largest cognitive impairments at the onset of the disorder shows limited improvements in social functioning compared to higher functioning groups. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Cerebral Effects of Circulatory Arrest at 20° C in the Infant Pig

Circulatory arrest at 20° C is used during open heart surgery in infants. It has been stated that significant brain damage does not occur. Piglets between two and six weeks of age were cooled to 20° C using extracorporeal circulation and a membrane oxygenator. After one hour of circulatory arrest the perfusion system was used to rewarm the animals and restore normal circulation. Electroencephalogram was monitored throughout perfusion and surgery, and repeated on surviving animals on the third, fifth, seventh and tenth postoperative days. On the tenth day the animals were killed by injection of pentobarbitone. Other groups were subjected to Continuous perfusion at 20° C, Continuous perfusion at 37° C, Thoracotomy and cannulation, Ischaemia, and Hypoxia. The return of E.E.G. activity was delayed after circulatory arrest compared with those continuously perfused. Lesions were found in the cerebral cortex in all the animals which had circulatory arrest and those subjected to ischaemia and hypoxia. The brains of animals of the other groups were indistinguishable from those killed without any experimental procedure. Despite apparent recovery, brain damage following hypothermic arrest during open heart surgery remains possible.
The function of natural compounds in important anticancer mechanisms

The existence of malignant tumors has been a threat to human life, health, and safety. Although the rapid development of radiotherapy, drug therapy, surgery, and local therapy has improved the quality of life of tumor patients, there are still some risks. Natural compounds are widely used in cancer because they are easy to obtain, have a good curative effects and have no obvious side effects, and play a vital role in the prevention and treatment of various cancers. Phenolic, flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, and other natural components of traditional Chinese medicine have certain anti-tumor activities, which can promote apoptosis, anti-proliferation, anti-metastasis, inhibit angiogenesis, change the morphology of cancer cells and regulate immune function, etc., and have positive effects on breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, gastric cancer, rectal cancer and so on. To better understand the effects of natural compounds on cancer, this paper screened out four important pathways closely related to cancer, including cell death and immunogenic cell death, immune cells in the tumor microenvironment, inflammation and related pathways and tumor metastasis, and systematically elaborated the effects of natural compounds on cancer.
Detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Dog of Assam

Natural infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosisis uncommonly isolated from cases of animal tuberculosis following close, prolonged contact with infectious humans (Michel et al., 2003). Companion animals living in contact with TB patients are at great risk of exposure to this pathogen and post mortem surveys performed in European cities in the first half of the 20th century determined the prevalence of canine TB as varying between 0.1 and 6.7% (Snider, 1971). Also the diseased companion animals can be the potential source of infection to human has been highlighted by previous author (Snider 1971).
How to predict the culprit segment in percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic surgery under local anesthesia for surgical treatment of lumbar degenerative diseases? Radiologic images or clinical symptoms

Objective Percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic surgery (PTES) is a novel, minimally invasive technique used to treat lumbar degenerative diseases (LDDs). PTES under local anesthesia was performed to treat the culprit segment of LDDs predicted by radiologic images or clinical symptoms, and the efficacy, security, and feasibility were evaluated. Methods Eighty-seven cases of LDDs with nerve root symptoms, which were not consistent with lumbar degenerative levels and degrees on MRI and CT, were treated with PTES under local anesthesia in a day surgery ward from January 2015 to December 2019. Forty-two patients, whose culprit segments were predicted by radiologic images, were included in group A. The other 45 patients, whose culprit segments were predicted by clinical symptoms, were included in group B. Leg pain VAS and ODI scores before and after PTES were recorded. The outcome was defined according to the MacNab grade at the 2-year follow-up. Postoperative complications were recorded. Results In group A, 2 patients underwent PTES for one segment, 37 patients underwent PTES for two segments, and 3 patients underwent PTES for three segments. One of the one-segment PTES patients had no relief from symptoms and underwent another PTES for other culprit segments 3 months after surgery. In group B, 44 of 45 patients were treated using PTES for one segment and 1 patient was treated for two segments. Group B showed significantly less operative duration, less blood loss, and less fluoroscopy frequency than group A (p < 0.001). The leg pain VAS score and the ODI score significantly decreased after the operation in both groups (p < 0.001), and the excellent and good rates were 97.6% (41/42) in group A and 100% (45/45) in group B at the 2-year follow-up. The leg pain VAS score of group B was significantly lower than that of group A immediately and 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, and 3 months after surgery (p < 0.001). There was no statistical difference in ODI scores and the excellent and good rates between the two groups. No complications, such as wound infection or permanent nerve injury, were observed. Conclusion It is much more accurate to predict the culprit segment according to clinical symptoms than radiologic images in PTES under local anesthesia for surgical treatment of LDDs.
Energy-efficient power amplifiers and linearization techniques for massive MIMO transmitters: a review

Highly efficient power amplifiers (PAs) and associated linearization techniques have been developed to accommodate the explosive growth in the data transmission rate and application of massive multiple input multiple output (mMIMO) systems. In this paper, energy-efficient integrated Doherty PA monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) and linearization techniques are reviewed for both the sub-6 GHz and millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) fifth-generation (5G) mMIMO systems; different semiconductor processes and architectures are compared and analyzed. Since the 5G protocols have not yet been finalized and PA specifications for mMIMO are still under consideration, it is worth investigating novel design methods to further improve their efficiency and linearity performance. Digital predistortion techniques need to evolve to be adapted in mMIMO systems, and some creative linearity enhancement techniques are needed to simultaneously improve the compensation accuracy and reduce the power consumption.
Statistical learning abilities and their relation to language

Funding information Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Grant/Award Number: P20HD091013 Abstract Numerous studies on statistical learning (SL) have demonstrated humans' sensitivity to complex statistical properties in their sensory environment. These observations have had a profound impact on the study of language, highlighting statistical aspects of the linguistic input that can be learned from experience, leading to the widespread claim that SL plays a key role in language acquisition and processing. But how can this theorized link be experimentally demonstrated? One increasingly popular avenue comes from studies of individual differences, which tie individual variability in SL to variance in linguistic behavior. This review presents the theoretical advances stemming from this line of research, as well as some of the challenges it currently faces. It contends that while previous studies had an important role in establishing the existence of some coarse-grained link between SL and language, recent developments in SL research suggest that the exact nature of this relationship is more complex than originally conceived and is still far from being fully understood. I specifically discuss three outstanding challenges: (a) understanding individual differences in light of the componential nature of SL, (b) mapping the full array of SL processes given the complexity of real-world statistics, and (c) estimating the strength of current empirical evidence while taking into account both positive and null findings. Confronting these issues, I argue, is a necessary step towards a full theory of the role of SL across language. Received: 12 May 2019 Revised: 10 December 2019 Accepted: 12 December 2019
Cystoseira barbata marine algae have a molluscicidal activity against Biomphalaria alexandrina snails supported by scanning electron microscopy, hematological and histopathological alterations, and larvicidal activity against the infective stages of Schistosoma mansoni

Schistosomiasis is one of the neglected tropical diseases. Biomphalaria spp. is the intermediate host of Schistosoma mansoni. The aim of this study is to evaluate the molluscicidal activity of the ethanolic extract of Cystoseira barbata marine algae on Biomphalaria alexandrina snails. The present results indicated that HPLC of C. barbata ethanolic extract contained 20 flavonoids, 20 phenolic compounds and 10 saccharides. It has a molluscicidal activity on B. alexandrina snails at LC50 175.04 mg L− 1 after 48 h of exposure. Scanning electron microscope of the head foot region of B. alexandrina snails exposed to 2 LC50 (175.04 mg L− 1) of the ethanolic extract shows the rough surface and damaged cilia in the tentacles and the foot region; the mantle contained erosion in its tegmental surface. Exposure to LC50 of the ethanolic extract caused ovicidal, miracidicidal and cercaricidal effects. Examinations of the hemocytes monolayers of the exposed snails showed that hyalinocytes had a shrunken nucleus and granulocytes had irregular cell membrane, forming pseudopodia. Histopathological changes occurred in the head foot region after exposure to LC50 of the extracted algae, where, vacuoles, shrinkage in the mucous secreting glands and splitting of the oblique muscle fibers were present. Also, histopathological alterations occurred in the digestive gland where the digestive cells were ruptured, vacuolated and there was a marked increase in the number of the secretory cells and these alterations were concentration dependent. Conclusively, C. barbata ethanolic extract contains bioactive molecules that could be developed as molluscicides for the control of freshwater intermediate hosts for schistosomiasis.
Coral Reef Monitoring in Marine Reserves of Northern Madagascar

This study has provided detailed biophysical information on shallow to mid-depth coral reef habitats for the existing National Marine Parks at Masoala and Mananara and for the recently designated Sahamalaza National Park, all located in northern Madagascar. Data indicates that large scale disturbance events such as severe tropical storms are a major influence on shallow and mid-depth coral reef habitats in the marine parks. Differences in benthic composition were also governed by differences in marine habitat according to exposure gradients. A preliminary investigation of the effects of management practices on coral reef fauna did not reveal any significant differences between park zones, such as higher reef fish biomass in protected compared to unprotected reefs. Low to moderate fishing pressure on reefs adjacent to marine parks is likely to be a primary contributing factor to this lack of difference in marine resource availability between management zones.
Spatio-temporal Segmentation Based Adaptive Compression of Dynamic Mesh Sequences

With the recent advances in data acquisition techniques, the compression of various dynamic mesh sequence data has become an important topic in the computer graphics community. In this article, we present a new spatio-temporal segmentation-based approach for the adaptive compression of the dynamic mesh sequences. Given an input dynamic mesh sequence, we first compute an initial temporal cut to obtain a small subsequence by detecting the temporal boundary of dynamic behavior. Then, we apply a two-stage vertex clustering on the resulting subsequence to classify the vertices into groups with optimal intra-affinities. After that, we design a temporal segmentation step based on the variations of the principal components within each vertex group prior to performing a PCA-based compression. Furthermore, we apply an extra step on the lossless compression of the PCA bases and coefficients to gain more storage saving. Our approach can adaptively determine the temporal and spatial segmentation boundaries to exploit both temporal and spatial redundancies. We have conducted extensive experiments on different types of 3D mesh animations with various segmentation configurations. Our comparative studies show the advantages of our approach for the compression of 3D mesh animations.
Scalable and accurate quantum tomography from fewer measurements

Quantum tomography is a matrix recovery problem that is not amenable to nuclear-norm minimization. We review existing recovery strategies and propose new ones, with an emphasis on methods with provable guarantees. An outcome of this is a new method with guarantees that is more accurate and more scalable than previous methods. A single quantum system of q-qubits |ψ〉 can be described by a 2 × 2 positive semi-definite matrix X that has trace 1 and rank 1. The exponential growth in the number of qubits is due to entanglement, and this accounts for some of the extraordinary ability of quantum computers, but it also poses challenging problems. Quantum state tomography describes the process of taking measurements of X in order to estimate the underlying state, and is an essential breadand-butter tool for building components of a quantum computer. Each measurement is slow to acquire, and the system drifts significantly over a time of 10 hours, thus limiting the possible number of measurements. Since the number of required measurements grows exponentially with q, physicists are are constrained to small systems, e.g. 8 qubits [1]. Recently, ideas from matrix completion have been applied to the quantum tomography problem, with provable recovery guarantees [2]. However, that approach fails to take advantage of all prior information. This talk fixes these weaknesses and provides alternative provable methods, and shows enormous practical improvements. Let d = 2 and X ∈ Cd×d. From a set of linear measurements (A(X))i = 〈Ai, Xi〉 = tr(AiXi) for Hermitian Ai, the tomography problem is posed as
Virtual Big Heads: Analysis of Human Perception and Comfort of Head Scales in Social Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) technologies provide a shared platform for collaboration among users in a spatial context. To enhance the quality of social signals during interaction between users, researchers and practitioners started augmenting users’ interpersonal space with different types of virtual embodied social cues. A prominent example is commonly referred to as the "Big Head" technique, in which the head scales of virtual interlocutors are slightly increased to leverage more of the display’s visual space to convey facial social cues. While beneficial in improving interpersonal social communication, the benefits and thresholds of human perception of facial cues and comfort in such Big Head environments are not well understood, limiting their usefulness and subjective experience.In this paper, we present a human-subject study that we conducted to understand the impact of an increased or decreased head scale in social VR on participants’ ability to perceive facial expressions as well as their sense of comfort and feeling of "uncanniness. " We explored two head scaling methods and compared them with respect to perceptual thresholds and user preferences. We further show that the distance to interlocutors has an important effect on the results. We discuss implications and guidelines for practical applications that aim to leverage VR-enhanced social cues.
THIN SLICING OUR WAY TO SELF- PROTECTION: STEREOTYPICAL REALITY AND THE PERCEPTION OF CRIMINAL TYPE

Physiognomists have applied the study of human facial characteristics to personality since Lavatar’s work in the 18th C (Lavatar, 1866). Frequently dismissed as an absurd practice with dangerous implications, people routinely, deliberately, and instinctually apply these same inferential principles to first impression formation. Evolutionary psychologists posit that aspects of human cognition may have evolved to facilitate detection and defensive responses to individuals who intend to do us harm (Schaller, 2008). Self-protection and preservation are in the interest of survival of the species. The present work examines the understudied area of predictive ability to identify criminals by crime type. A large sample of respondents (n=2,824) drawn from a large Midwestern university were asked to match 10 criminal offenses to 10 randomly selected Department of Corrections identification photographs. Analyses of accuracy included both respondent demographic differences as well as offender to offense identification. Respondents identified six out of 10 crime categories at a rate significantly greater than chance, lending support to the contention that research examining the predictive accuracy of perception, has great utility in the areas of self-protection, preservation, and threat/harm reduction.
Artificial insemination in rabbits: factors that interfere in assessing its results

Understanding the rabbit’s sexual behavior and reproduction process is very important when using artificial insemination (AI) instead of natural mating in intensive rearing systems. Ovulation in rabbit females not occur spontaneously/ induced ovulatory animals, but it has to be induced through a neuro-hormonal reflex, which is stimulated during mating. The mating effect of satiety on specific measures of rabbit female sexual behavior has not been investigated. When applying AI, in the absence of a male, ovulation has to be induced by exogenous hormonal analogs. Bio-stimulation techniques are suggested as a substitute for hormones in that respect. One of the most effective approaches to distribute ejaculates from bucks of superior quality or genetic value is the systematic use of AI in intensive rabbit production. Rabbit’s sexual receptivity has a significant influence on fertility at insemination. In addition, a limitation factor for rabbit AI spread is related to their semen preservation. Fresh diluted semen has been used but its quality can be maintained only for a short period. However, there are few articles available have indicated the negativity of AI usage on rabbit, and the factors that can influence the AI process including the sexual desire behavior. Therefore, the objective of this review is to identify the important factors that directly or indirectly affect AI process success, meanwhile interfering with and/or relying on AI assessment.