Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hormone Therapy and Risk for Venous Thromboembolism: Comments and Correction

TO THE EDITOR: Grady and colleagues (1) speculate that effects of oral estrogen on factor VII and protein C may be possible mechanisms for the prothrombotic effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) observed in the Heart and Estrogen/progestin Replacement Study (HERS). I am concerned that the specific points made by the authors about protein C and factor VII provide an oversimplistic and somewhat inaccurate interpretation of the available data. First, Grady and colleagues postulated that the higher levels of protein C seen with the use of estrogen may be thrombogenic. However, protein C is a natural anticoagulant; it is actually reductions in protein C levels that are associated with an increased risk for thrombosis. Furthermore, the effects of combined HRT with estrogen and progestin on coagulation factors are most relevant to HERS. Of note, in the same study that found higher levels of protein C with the use of estrogen, no effect on protein C levels was evident in current users of estrogen and progestin (2). Second, Grady and colleagues speculated that an effect of estrogen to increase factor VII levels may have thrombogenic effects. Indeed, evidence suggests that conjugated equine estrogen increases factor VII coagulation activity (3). However, once again it is the effect of combined HRT on factor VII that is more relevant. Most studies of conjugated equine estrogen and medroxyprogesterone acetate that have examined this question have found no change in factor VII coagulation activity (2-4). The above findings suggest that medroxyprogesterone acetate may suppress or negate the effect of conjugated equine estrogen on factor VII. While the prothrombotic effects of combined HRT may not occur by way of factor VII or protein C, evidence indicates that combined HRT can activate coagulation processes, resulting in increased production of thrombin and fibrin (5). More study is required to determine the mechanisms underlying such increases.
Similarité textuelle pour l'association de documents journalistiques

RÉSUMÉ. Cet article étudie l’association de documents journalistiques issus de la presse en ligne et de journaux télévisés, en utilisant des similarités sémantiques textuelles. Les associations de documents sont étudiées dans des conﬁgurations intramedia et intermedia. Les expériences menées montrent que les métriques de similarité sémantique qui s’avéraient efﬁcaces dans le contexte de similarité entre questions posées sur un forum sont également efﬁcaces pour l’as-sociation de documents, quelle que soit la conﬁguration d’association média. L’inﬂuence de la longueur des documents requêtes et cibles est étudiée de façon approfondie et montre des comportements contrastés des métriques selon la longueur. ABSTRACT. This article explores the linking of written and audiovisual news, based on the use of semantic textual similarity metrics. It presents a comprehensive study of different linking approaches with various conﬁgurations of intermedia or intramedia association. It is shown that textual similarity metrics that have proved to perform very well in the context of community question answering can provide efﬁcient news linking metrics, whatever the media association conﬁguration. The inﬂuence of document length and request length is also explored for several similarity metrics. The results highlight contrasted behaviors regarding request and document lengths.
Merchant Energy Trading in a Network

We formulate the merchant trading of energy in a network of storage and transport assets as a Markov decision process (MDP) with uncertain energy prices. Because of the intractability of this MDP, we develop heuristics and both lower and dual (upper) bounds on the optimal policy value estimated within Monte Carlo simulation. We achieve tractability by applying linear optimization in novel ways for approximate dynamic programming: (i) Iterative extensions of least squares Monte Carlo techniques based on value and continuation function approximations (V and CFAs) that are separable and non-separable, respectively, and piecewise linear concave in the inventory levels of the storage assets; (ii) a generalization of a commercially available deterministic reoptimization heuristic that implicitly uses an analogous CFA; and (iii) a perfect information dual bound based on a separable and linear VFA. Using realistic natural gas instances, we establish that (i) non-separable CFAs yield superior operating policies compared to separable VFAs, and near optimality can be obtained by reactively accounting for price uncertainty, which has both computational and modeling advantages; and (ii) separable and linear VFAs provide near tight dual bounds. The applicability of our methodological developments transcends our specific application.
Thread-safe reactive programming

The execution of an application written in a reactive language involves transfer of data and control flow between imperative and reactive abstractions at well-defined points. In a multi-threaded environment, multiple such interactions may execute concurrently, potentially causing data races and event ordering ambiguities. Existing RP languages either disable multi-threading or handle it at the cost of reducing expressiveness or weakening consistency. This paper proposes a model for thread-safe reactive programming (RP) that ensures abort-free strict serializability under concurrency while sacrificing neither expressiveness nor consistency. We also propose an architecture for integrating a corresponding scheduler into the RP language runtime, such that thread-safety is provided "out-of-the-box" to the applications. We show the feasibility of our proposal by providing and evaluating a ready-to-use implementation integrated into the REScala programming language. The scheduling algorithm is formally proven correct. A thorough empirical evaluation shows that reactive applications build on top of it scale with multiple threads, while the scheduler incurs acceptable performance overhead in a single-threaded configuration. The scalability enabled by our scheduler is roughly on-par with that of hand-crafted application-specific locking and better than the scalability enabled by a scheduler using an off-the-shelf software transactional memory library.
Prevalence and Associated Factors of Hypertension in Morocco: A Review

HTA is a major public health problem worldwide. Indeed, previous studies have reported that 26.4% of the adult population was hypertensive, for an estimated total of 972 million people: 333 million in developed countries and 639 million in developing countries. For the year 2025, researchers estimated that 29.2% of the adult population will be hypertensive, which represents 1.56 billion individuals, leading by consequent to an increase of 60% in 25 years. In addition, the morbidity and the mortality caused by this disease is increasing in a remarkable way in the developing countries. In Morocco hypertension prevalence data are very scare and limited, the national survey of the Ministry of Health conducted in 2000, reveals a prevalence of 33.6%; a rate that remains high as in other Maghreb or in Mediterranean countries. With regard to the factors involved in this epidemiological situation, it is clear that the radical and irreversible change in lifestyle has contributed significantly to the increase in chronic disease rates, including hypertension. The other main factors could be summarized as: age, food, sedentary lifestyle. It should be noted that there is a almost absence of studies on the prevalence of hypertension and the associated factors in Morocco, which in itself is a limiting factor for understanding the etiology of hypertension. The prevalence of hypertension in Morocco remains high, investigations carried out in this context could improve scientific knowledge and thus, contribute to the prevention and control of the various factors associated with
A Human Body Gait Recognition System Based on Fourier Transform and Quartile Difference Extraction

A research method of gait recognition based on feature combination is proposed, which includes the wavelet transform (WT), Fourier transform (FT) and the quartile difference, to explore the gait recognition system in Internet of things human body sensor based on smart phone . It can extract the low-dimensional gait parameters of the acceleration signal, and these gait parameters can reflect the movement characteristics. Then, they are combined into f eature vector to identif y by a pattern recognition algorithm. Finally, the experimental verification is carried out in the experimental system. The results show that this gait recognition method simplifies the processing flow to a certain extent, and improves the recognition accuracy . In conclusion, the algorithm has a good effect, and can identify the gait behavior with high precision.
Process of Becoming

Works in progress, We are gradually transformed As the wonders and energy and pains of others Seep into the cracks We never thought were there And, like water in winter, Freezing and thawing, Imperceptibly but inevitably Loosen our moorings, Carrying away a piece of us As they leave in the spring. They leave in its place A fine soft powder To smooth our jagged edges, Or a gleaming spark of emerald To make us sing, Or the exquisitely perfect skeleton of a leaf, A gift of fragile beauty to grace our days. So that the defects left within us By the passing of others Are filled with a precious piece of them To become entwined in our deepest, safest places, Giving back more than they took away, Remaking us anew.
The (T, L)-Path Model and Algorithms for Information Dissemination in Dynamic Networks

A dynamic network is the abstraction of distributed systems with frequent network topology changes. With such dynamic network models, fundamental distributed computing problems can be formally studied with rigorous correctness. Although quite a number of models have been proposed and studied for dynamic networks, the existing models are usually defined from the point of view of connectivity properties. In this paper, instead, we examine the dynamicity of network topology according to the procedure of changes, i.e., how the topology or links change. Following such an approach, we propose the notion of the “instant path” and define two dynamic network models based on the instant path. Based on these two models, we design distributed algorithms for the problem of information dissemination respectively, one of the fundamental distributing computing problems. The correctness of our algorithms is formally proved and their performance in time cost and communication cost is analyzed. Compared with existing connectivity based dynamic network models and algorithms, our procedure based ones are definitely easier to be instantiated in the practical design and deployment of dynamic networks.
GRAD: A Metric for Evaluating Summaries

RÉSUMÉ. Ce papier vise à proposer une nouvelle métrique pour évaluer les résumés. La plupart de méthodes existantes (e.g. ROUGE) nécessitent une intervention humaine importante car elles comparent le résumé considéré avec un ensemble des résumés de référence (gold standard). De plus, les métriques basées sur le chevauchement de vocabulaires ne sont pas appropriées pour la comparaison avec le texte intégral. La métrique proposée intitulée GRAD vise à dépasser les défauts des mesures existantes et s’appuie sur la représentation graphique du texte. L’hypothèse est qu’un bon résumé doit être composé de sommets qui sont connectés avec un maximum d’autres sommets. En outre, nous introduisons un cadre entièrement automatique pour évaluer les métriques qui n’exige aucune annotation humaine. Les expérimentations conduites sur une collection d’articles scientifiques disponibles sur la plate-forme ISTEX ainsi que sur des articles Wikipédia prouvent que la métrique proposée est meilleure de façon significative comparativement aux mesures existantes pour distinguer les résumés automatiques et ceux créés par les humains.
Service mobile apps: a millennial generation perspective

Purpose This purpose of this paper is to evaluate Millennials’ intention to use service mobile apps and assess gender as a moderator. Design/methodology/approach An extended technology acceptance model framework that includes information quality and self-efficacy guides this research. PLS-SEM is used to evaluate the data and test the hypotheses. Findings The study reveals that information quality, self-efficacy, perceived ease of use and usefulness, and attitude influence Millennials’ intentions to use service mobile apps. Additionally, gender is found to partially moderate the results. Practical implications Service companies that rely on mobile apps to deliver services ought to consider the disparities among the Millennial generation, increasing the likelihood that Millennial customers will adopt service mobile apps and that they receive acceptable customer experiences. Originality/value This paper examines the factors influencing adoption and use of service mobile apps among Millennials and examines gender as a moderator. Additionally, guidelines for service mobile app design are included.
Détection d'opinion argumentée à partir de Twitter

With the explosive growth of Web 2.0 (e.g., blogs, microblogs, Twitter, and postings in social network sites) on the web, individuals and organizations are increasingly using the content to ﬁnd and monitor opinionated data and distill the information contained in them: opinion supported by arguments or judgment formed about something or someone. Several researchers have focused on the opinion analysis and opinion detection. We attempt in this paper to deﬁne and characterize an opinion with the associated prevailing arguments components and we called it argued opinion. we conducted experiments using differents classifying models.
Application of Multi-sensor Information Fusion Based on Improved Particle Swarm Optimization in Unmanned System Path Planning

Intelligent vehicle driving performance is safe and stable, which can significantly improve the efficiency of road traffic and reduce energy consumption, and intelligent vehicle is also the development direction of modern transport. Its core technology is intelligent environment perception module, by using a variety of sensors on the car in which the surrounding environment for data collection, processing module to provide effective control for the basis. In this paper, a new SINS / CNS / GPS integrated navigation observation equation is proposed, and a new federated data fusion structure is designed for the integrated navigation system. The particle filter is used to fuse the multi-source data of the federated filter subsystem, thus eliminating the limitations of the classical Kalman filter. The traditional Kalman filter structure and the federal particle filter mechanism are designed. The comparison shows that the proposed algorithm is effective in the information fusion of the integrated navigation system, and the filtering effect is superior to the traditional filtering method.
Investigation on Parental Involvement: A Case Study of Teaching Shanghainese in Shanghai Kindergartens

The aim of this study was to examine parental involvement of teaching Shanghainese in Shanghai kindergartens and to recommend the further promotion of parental involvement, in efforts to maintain and develop minority languages or Chinese dialects in China. Case study approach was used and Qing Kindergarten was the school chosen for this study. The results suggested that parental involvement play a significant role in promoting the teaching of minority languages or Chinese dialects at schools. However, there is much more that needs to be done for schools to enhance parental involvement, such as the increasing quality contacts, establishing a stronger relationship with parents, soliciting and responding to parents’ suggestions and concerns, and empowering parents. Keywords—parental involvement; teaching Shanghainese; kindergarten
Revisiting wear leveling design on compression applied 3D NAND flash memory: work-in-progress

Compression has been demonstrated as an efficient method for lifetime improvement on flash memory. However, data compression ratios are various, which bring proportional wearing on flash pages. Furthermore, the compression schemes have still not been considered in the design of the state-of-the-art wear leveling schemes. Thus, there will be some waste on lifetime exploitation, especially for three-dimensional (3D) NAND flash memory. 3D NAND flash memory is developed to boost the storage capacity by stacking memory cells vertically. However, in 3D NAND flash, one critical characteristic is that its endurance is significantly varied from blocks to pages. Thus, it is necessary to revisit the wear leveling mechanism for compression applied 3D NAND flash memory for further lifetime improvement.
An industrial case study in compiler testing (tool demo)

Compiler construction is one of the oldest areas of software engineering, yet despite its maturity it has underdeveloped sides such as compiler testing. There exist many disparate methods for testing parsers, optimisers and other components, but no unified methodology that consumable by practitioners from a book to be directly applied to fulfil their needs. Instead of striving to cover all theoretical aspects of compiler testing in one paper, we present a case study for an ongoing project of a relatively large size for our company (2 years, 3--6 devs, 500kLOC), a clean room compiler development effort in replicating a 4GL. We built a testing framework and a model-based test data generator, which consumes manually written specifications and generates all the necessary test code in the 4GL, in the host language, and in auxiliary DSLs (batch files, XML project descriptions), to both the developers' and the customer's satisfaction. The number of specifications is 927 at the publication time, while the number of test cases generated from them, is 6268. All these tests have been run prior to shipping for the last 49 releases of the compiler, both to ensure the lack of regression and to report on the project overall progress. The generated tests are separated into 11 categories which the paper details in the hope that the classification will aid in seeking related work and in pushing this line of research forward.
The Effect of Microbiota on Colon Carcinogenesis

Although genetic background is known to contribute to colon carcinogenesis, the exact etiology of the disease remains elusive. The organ’s extensive interaction with microbes necessitated research on the role of microbiota on development of colon cancer. In this review, we summarized the defense mechanism of colon from foreign organism, and germ-free animal models that have been employed to elucidate microbial effect. We also comprehensively discussed the metabolic property of microbiota such as butyrate production, facilitation of heme toxicity, bile acid transformation, and nitrate reduction that has been shown to contribute to the development of the tumor. Finally, up-to-date subjects such as the effect of age and gender on microbiota are briefly discussed.
Hold Or take Optimal Plan (HOOP): A quadratic programming approach to multi-robot trajectory generation

In this work, we present Hold Or take Optimal Plan (HOOP), a centralized trajectory generation algorithm for labeled multi-robot systems operating in obstacle-free, two-dimensional, continuous workspaces. Given a team of N robots, each with nth-order dynamics, our algorithm finds trajectories that navigate vehicles from their start positions to non-interchangeable goal positions in a collision-free manner. The algorithm operates in two phases. In the motion planning step, a geometric algorithm finds a collision-free, piecewise-linear trajectory for each robot. In the trajectory generation step, each robot’s trajectory is refined into a higher-order piecewise polynomial with a quadratic program. The novelty of our method is in this problem decomposition. The motion plan, through abstracting away robots’ dynamics, can be found quickly. It is then subsequently leveraged to construct collision avoidance constraints for N decoupled quadratic programs instead of a single, coupled optimization problem, decreasing computation time. We prove that this method is safe, complete, and generates smooth trajectories that respect robots’ dynamics. We demonstrate the algorithm’s practicality through extensive quadrotor experiments.
Synthesis of constant power loads using switching converters under sliding mode control

In this paper, a systematic approach is presented to synthesize constant power loads using switching converters under sliding mode control. The study shows that switching converters with a series inductor at the input port may behave as an instantaneous constant power load under sliding-mode control based on a nonlinear switching surface representing the error between the input power of the converter and a suitable power reference. With the proposed approach, the synthesis and design of constant power loads is simple. The synthesized loads can offer an inexpensive alternative to analyze switching converters feeding constant power loads such as in dc distributed power systems and electric vehicles. The theoretical derivations are validated by numerical simulations performed on the detailed switched model of boost, SEPIC and Cuk converters.
Reduction of the Bitter Taste in Packaged Natural Black Manzanilla Olives by Zinc Chloride

The work assays the use of various concentrations of ZnCl2 (0.0–0.1%, w/v) in packaged natural black Manzanilla table olives. The transformations were followed for 4 months. The presence of Zn modified the leaching of total sugars (sucrose, glucose, fructose, and mannitol) into the brine, which decreased as the ZnCl2 content increased. Over the study, sucrose and glucose were exhausted while fructose, although consumed, left some final residues and the use of mannitol was limited. Titratable acidity was always gradually formed causing the subsequent pH decrease, which stabilized at ≈3.5. Acetic and mainly lactic acid were also formed during the assay, reaching the highest level of lactic acid in the 0.050% ZnCl2 treatment, followed by the Control. The acids were formed by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) (Lactobacillus pentosus, 39%, and Lactobacillus plantarum, 61%). However, the most outstanding Zn effect was found on the olive sensory characteristics: its presence markedly reduced the bitter notes, increased the overall appreciation, and the treatment containing 0.075% ZnCl2 had the highest scores in hardness, crunchiness, and overall appreciation. Therefore, the addition of ZnCl2 into packaged natural table olives may lead to healthy products with desirable sensory characteristics which, in turn, could promote consumption.