Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ghrist Barcoded Video Frames. Application in Detecting Persistent Visual Scene Surface Shapes captured in Videos

This article introduces an application of Ghrist barcodes in the study of persistent Betti numbers derived from vortex nerve complexes found in triangulations of video frames. A Ghrist barcode is a topology of data pictograph useful in representing the persistence of the features of changing shapes. The basic approach is to introduce a free Abelian group representation of intersecting filled polygons on the barycenters of the triangles of Alexandroff nerves. An Alexandroff nerve is a maximal collection of triangles with a common vertex in the triangulation of a finite, bounded planar region. In our case, the planar region is a video frame. A Betti number is a count of the number of generators in a finite Abelian group. The focus here is on the persistent Betti numbers across sequences of triangulated video frames. Each Betti number is mapped to an entry in a Ghrist barcode. Two main results are given, namely, vortex nerves are Edelsbrunner-Harer nerve complexes and the Betti number of a vortex nerve equals $k+2$ for a vortex nerve containing $k$ edges attached between a pair of vortex cycles in the nerve.
Factors Associated With Receipt of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy or Prolonged Exposure Therapy Among Individuals With PTSD.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to systematically review variables associated with initiation of trauma-centered cognitive-behavioral therapy (TC-CBT) among individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). METHODS PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress (PILOTS), and Scopus were searched in a systematic manner up to 2018, and 26 relevant studies were recovered and analyzed. RESULTS The average weighted initiation rate was 6% in larger hospital systems with a high rate of trauma and 28% in outpatient mental health settings (range 4%-83%). Older age (odds ratio [OR]=1.56, 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.51-1.61), female gender (OR=1.18, 95% CI=1.08-1.27), black or other racial-ethnic minority group (OR=1.16, 95% CI=1.03-1.28), Veterans Affairs PTSD service connection status (OR=2.30, 95% CI=2.18-2.42), mental health referral (OR=2.28, 95% CI=1.05-3.50), greater staff exposure to TC-CBT (OR=2.30, 95% CI=2.09-2.52), adaptability of TC-CBT to staff workflow (OR=4.66, 95% CI=1.60-7.72), greater PTSD severity (OR=1.46, 95% CI=1.13-1.78), and comorbid depression (OR=1.21, 95% CI=1.14-1.29) increased the likelihood of TC-CBT initiation, whereas delayed treatment reduced the likelihood of TC-CBT initiation (OR=0.93, 95% CI=0.92-0.95). Qualitative studies showed that mental health beliefs (stigma and lack of readiness), provider organizational factors (low availability, privacy issues), and patient lack of time (logistics) were perceived as barriers to initiation by patients and providers. CONCLUSIONS TC-CBT initiation increased among patients who were older and female. Initiation was also higher among providers who had more exposure to TC-CBT in their work environment and when TC-CBT fit into their existing workflow.
Legal knowledge based systems

Existing Legal Knowledge-Based Systems (LKBS) nowadays show themselves capable of providing reliable advice if treated by competent users. When analysing the cooperation between a user and an LKBS, it transpires that distinct interpretation of legal notions may lead to different advices, affecting the system's reliability. Therefore, each system should tune its level of communication to the level of the user's knowledge of legal notions. This contribution first describes the main features of an adequate user-system cooperation , and then focuses on two requirements: user-friendliness and reliability. It is argued that the modelling of problem solving and cooperation handling should be separated. A new model of cooperation is proposed, in which the drawbacks of interlacement and insufficient understanding are diminished, and an efficacious suppletion of real-world knowledge is made possible. Based on these principles the model is also applicable in non-legal areas with sufficient domain and meta-level knowledge available, since it relies on a context-sensitive component. Hence one of our conclusions is that separate modelling may invoke new ideas on the modularity of cognitive cooperation processes.
High-Frequency Activity During Stereotyped Low-Frequency Events Might Help to Identify the Seizure Onset Zone

Stereotyped high-frequency oscillations discriminate seizure onset zones and critical functional cortex in focal epilepsy. Liu S, Gurses C, Sha Z, Quach MM, Sencer A, Bebek N, et al. Brain. 2018;141(3):713-730. doi:10.1093/brain/awx374. PMID: 29394328. High-frequency oscillations in local field potentials recorded with intracranial electroencephalogram are putative biomarkers of seizure-onset zones in epileptic brain. However, localized 80- to 500-Hz oscillations can also be recorded from normal and nonepileptic cerebral structures. When defined only by rate or frequency, physiological high-frequency oscillations are indistinguishable from pathological ones that limit their application in epilepsy presurgical planning. We hypothesized that pathological high-frequency oscillations occur in a repetitive fashion with a similar waveform morphology that specifically indicates seizure onset zones. We investigated the waveform patterns of automatically detected high-frequency oscillations in 13 patients with epilepsy and 5 control subjects, with an average of 73 subdural and intracerebral electrodes recorded per patient. The repetitive oscillatory waveforms were identified using a pipeline of unsupervised machine learning techniques and were then correlated with independently clinician-defined seizure onset zones. Consistently in all patients, the stereotypical high-frequency oscillations with the highest degree of waveform similarity were localized within the seizure onset zones only, whereas the channels generating high-frequency oscillations embedded in random waveforms were found in the functional regions independent of the epileptogenic locations. The repetitive waveform pattern was more evident in fast ripples compared to ripples, suggesting a potential association between waveform repetition and the underlying pathological network. Our findings provided a new tool for the interpretation of pathological high-frequency oscillations that can be efficiently applied to distinguish seizure onset zones from functionally important sites, which is a critical step toward the translation of these signature events into valid clinical biomarkers.
Distribution and dynamics of risk factors associated with highly pathogenic avian in fl uenza H 5 N 1

L. ZHANG, Z. W. GUO*, E. S. BRIDGE, Y. M. LI AND X. M. XIAO Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijingshan, Beijing, China National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Beijing, China Department of Botany and Microbiology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
Spiky parallel electrostatic ion cyclotron and ion acoustic waves

Abstract. One of the interesting observations from the FAST satellite is the detection of strong spiky waveforms in the parallel electric field in association with ion cyclotron oscillations in the perpendicular electric fields. We report here an analytical model of the coupled nonlinear ion cyclotron and ion-acoustic waves, which could explain the observations. Using the fluid equations for the plasma consisting of warm electrons and cold ions, a nonlinear wave equation is derived in the rest frame of the propagating wave for any direction of propagation oblique to the ambient magnetic field. The equilibrium bulk flow of ions is also included in the model to mimic the field-aligned current. Depending on the wave Mach number M defined by M = V/Cs with V and Cs being the wave phase velocity and ion-acoustic speed, respectively, we find a range of solutions varying from a sinusoidal wave form for small amplitudes and low M to sawtooth and highly spiky waveforms for nearly parallel propagation. The results from the model are compared with the satellite observations.
Hospital Quality Metrics for Radical Cystectomy: Disease Specific and Correlated to Mortality Outcomes.

PURPOSE Measuring quality is a high priority for health care systems globally. Despite the high perioperative morbidity, mortality, expenditures and performance variation of radical cystectomy there is a paucity of validated bladder cancer quality metrics. We aimed to create a hospital quality scoring system for radical cystectomy which is disease specific and associated with patient centered outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS We used the NCDB (National Cancer Database) to identify hospitals where radical cystectomy was performed from 2004 to 2014. Mixed effects models were constructed to assess variation in hospital performance across 7 quality indicators. Indirect standardization was used to case mix adjust hospital performance. We assessed associations between quality indicators as well as the novel BC-QS (Bladder Cancer Quality Score) composite hospital quality metric with 30-day, 90-day and overall mortality using logistic and Cox regression, respectively. RESULTS At 1,200 facilities radical cystectomy was performed in a total of 48,341 patients from 2004 to 2014. Mixed effects models demonstrated significant between hospital variation across all quality indicators after case mix adjustment. The composite BC-QS metric was composed of the hospital positive margin rate, the lymph node dissection rate and the neoadjuvant chemotherapy rate. Better BC-QS performance was associated with lower 30-day and 90-day mortality (adjusted OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.64-0.96, and OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.72-0.97, respectively) and overall mortality (HR 0.86, 95% CI 0.81-0.92). Hospitals with a higher BC-QS had higher volume and more were affiliated with an academic institution than hospitals with a lower BC-QS (p <0.0001). CONCLUSIONS The BC-QS captures variations in the hospital performance of radical cystectomy and it shows an association of higher quality with lower patient mortality. Our validation of this quality metric provides support for its potential use by policy makers and payers in efforts to measure hospital quality for high cost surgeries.
Global and regional prevalence of strabismus: a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Purpose: Despite the importance of information on the prevalence of strabismus, which can be effective in planning preventive and curative services, no study has addressed its prevalence comprehensively. In this study, a systematic search was done to estimate the regional and global prevalence of strabismus in different age and sex groups and factors affecting prevalence heterogeneity. Methods: A comprehensive and systematic search was done in different international databases, including Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Embase, etc. to find published articles on the total prevalence of strabismus and the prevalence of exotropia and esotropia. A binomial distribution was used to calculate the prevalence and 95% confidence interval (CI). The Cochran’s Q-test and I2 were applied to evaluate heterogeneity and a random-effects model was used to assess the pooled prevalence. The Begg’s test was administered to investigate publication bias and finally, a meta-regression method was applied to determine the factors affecting the heterogeneity among studies. Results: Of 7980 articles, 56 articles with a total sample size of 229,396 were analyzed. Many of these articles (n = 14) were from the Regional Office for the Americas. The estimated of pooled prevalence (95% CI) of any strabismus, exotropia, and esotropia was 1.93% (1.64–2.21), 1.23% (1.00–1.46), and 0.77% (0.59–0.95), respectively. The heterogeneity in prevalence of strabismus and its subtypes according to I2 was above 95% (p value <.001 for all). Age had a direct effect on heterogeneity in the prevalence of exotropia (b: 3.491; p: 0.002). Moreover, WHO region had a significant direct effect on heterogeneity in the prevalence of strabismus (b: 0.482; p < .001) and esotropia (b: 0.168; p: 0.027), and publication year had a significant direct effect on heterogeneity in the prevalence of exotropia (b: 0.059; p: 0.045). Sample size and publication year did not have any association with strabismus nor with other variables. There was no publication bias according to the Begg’s test. Conclusion: The prevalence of strabismus varies widely in the world. As for factors affecting heterogeneity in the prevalence of strabismus, the results showed that age affected heterogeneity in the prevalence of exotropia, WHO region affected heterogeneity in the prevalence of strabismus and esotropia, and publication year affected heterogeneity in the prevalence of exotropia. Information about the global prevalence of strabismus can help health care planners design interventions and prioritize resource allocation.
econstor Make Your Publications Visible . A Service of zbw

This paper conducts a USDTRY rate forecast by ARIMA method using 3,069 daily observations between the dates of 3 January 2005 and 8 March 2017 and generates both long-term and short-term models. Existing works related to USDTRY rate forecast using ARIMA method generate static models, and none of them conduct multi-step prediction or out of sample fit. The work described in this paper, however, applies dynamic model generation and conducts multi-step ahead prediction for out of sample observations. In forecasts performed in this work for USDTRY rate, the shortterm ARIMAs outperform the long-term ARIMAs in predicting accuracy. Specifically, for the short-term ARIMAs appropriate specification is raised as ARIMA (2,1,0); on the other hand, for the long-term ARIMAs, the best order is emerged as ARIMA (0,1,1). Subjects: Monetary Economics; Economic Forecasting; Corporate Finance
The interplay between relationship effectiveness, life stress, and sleep: A prospective study

Funding information National Institute on Aging, Grant/Award Number: R01 AG039453 Research has shown that greater stress responses predict worse sleep and that the quality of one's current romantic relationship predicts one's sleep. Despite these established links, research has not examined connections between ongoing patterns of interpersonal experiences and competencies (relationship effectiveness) and stress exposure on sleep. Participants in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) completed measures assessing relationship effectiveness and stress exposure at ages 23 and 32 years, as well as sleep quality/duration at age 37 years. Analyses demonstrate that relationship effectiveness at age 23 years positively predicts sleep quality—but not sleep duration—at age 37 years via reduced stress exposure at age 32 years. These findings highlight the effects of relationship effectiveness and stress exposure across early to middle adulthood on sleep.
Recommending Multimedia Educational Resources on the MOVING Platform

The MOVING platform includes a huge amount of heterogeneous educational resources, such as documents, videos, and social media posts. We show how the MOVING recommender system can support users in dealing with such a massive information flow by leveraging semantic profiling. The HCF-IDF model exploits a thesaurus or ontology to represents users and documents and it is used to recommend educational resources based on users’ search history. We describe how the recommender is implemented how it is applied to the MOVING platform to deal with the huge amount of resources stored in the platform, their variety and the increasing number of users.
Efficient Parallel Simulation over Large-scale Social Contact Networks

Social contact network (SCN) models the daily contacts between people in real life. It consists of agents and locations. When agents visit a location at the same time, the social interactions can be established among them. Simulations over SCN have been employed to study social dynamics such as disease spread among population. Because of the scale of SCN and the execution time requirement, the simulations are usually run in parallel. However, a challenge to the parallel simulation is that the structure of SCN is naturally skewed with a few hub locations that have far more visitors than others. These hub locations can cause load imbalance and heavy communication between partitions, which therefore impact the simulation performance. This article proposes a comprehensive solution to address this challenge. First, the hub locations are decomposed into small locations, so that SCN can be divided into partitions with better balanced workloads. Second, the agents are decomposed to exploit data locality, so that the overall communication across partitions can be greatly reduced. Third, two enhanced execution mechanisms are designed for locations and agents, respectively, to improve simulation parallelism. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed solution, an epidemic simulation was developed and extensive experiments were conducted on two computer clusters using three SCN datasets with different scales. The results demonstrate that our approach can significantly improve the execution performance of the simulation.
A Transdiagnostic Perspective on Social Anhedonia

Humans are highly social beings, yet people with social anhedonia experience reduced interest in or reward from social situations. Social anhedonia is a key facet of schizotypal personality, an important symptom of schizophrenia, and increasingly recognized as an important feature in a range of other psychological disorders. However, to date, there has been little examination of the similarities and differences in social anhedonia across diagnostic borders. Here, our goal was to conduct a selective review of social anhedonia in different psychological and life course contexts, including the psychosis continuum, depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, and autism spectrum disorders, along with developmental and neurobiological factors. Current evidence suggests that the nature and expression of social anhedonia vary across psychological disorders with some groups showing deficient learning about, enjoyment from, and anticipation of the pleasurable aspects of social interactions, while for others, some of these components appear to remain intact. However, study designs and methodologies are diverse, the roles of developmental and neurobiological factors are not routinely considered, and direct comparisons between diagnostic groups are rare—which prevents a more nuanced understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved. Future studies, parsing the wanting, liking, and learning components of social reward, will help to fill gaps in the current knowledge base. Consistent across disorders is diminished pleasure from social situations, subsequent withdrawal, and poorer social functioning in those who express social anhedonia. Nonetheless, feelings of loneliness often remain, which suggests the need for social connection is not entirely absent. Adolescence is a particularly important period of social and neural development and may provide a valuable window on the developmental origins of social anhedonia. Adaptive social functioning is key to recovery from mental health disorders; therefore, understanding the intricacies of social anhedonia will help to inform treatment and prevention strategies for a range of diagnostic categories.
Quantification of Microbial Source Tracking and Pathogenic Bacterial Markers in Water and Sediments of Tiaoxi River (Taihu Watershed)

Taihu Lake is one of the largest freshwater lakes in China, serving as an important source of drinking water; >60% of source water to this lake is provided by the Tiaoxi River. This river faces serious fecal contamination issues, and therefore, a comprehensive investigation to identify the sources of fecal contamination was carried out and is presented here. The performance of existing universal (BacUni and GenBac), human (HF183-Taqman, HF183-SYBR, BacHum, and Hum2), swine (Pig-2-Bac), ruminant (BacCow), and avian (AV4143 and GFD) associated microbial source tracking (MST) markers was evaluated prior to their application in this region. The specificity and sensitivity results indicated that BacUni, HF183-TaqMan, Pig-2-Bac, and GFD assays are the most suitable in identifying human and animal fecal contamination. Therefore, these markers along with marker genes specific to selected bacterial pathogens were quantified in water and sediment samples of the Tiaoxi River, collected from 15 locations over three seasons during 2014 and 2015. Total/universal Bacteroidales markers were detected in all water and sediment samples (mean concentration 6.22 log10 gene copies/100 ml and 6.11 log10 gene copies/gram, respectively), however, the detection of host-associated MST markers varied. Human and avian markers were the most frequently detected in water samples (97 and 89%, respectively), whereas in sediment samples, only human-associated markers were detected more often (86%) than swine (64%) and avian (8.8%) markers. The results indicate that several locations in the Tiaoxi River are heavily polluted by fecal contamination and this correlated well with land use patterns. Among the five bacterial pathogens tested, Shigella spp. and Campylobacter jejuni were the most frequently detected pathogens in water (60% and 62%, respectively) and sediment samples (91% and 53%, respectively). Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) and pathogenic Leptospira spp. were less frequently detected in water samples (55% and 33%, respectively) and sediment samples (51% and 13%, respectively), whereas E. coli O157:H7 was only detected in sediment samples (11%). Overall, the higher prevalence and concentrations of Campylobacter jejuni, Shigella spp. , and STEC, along with the MST marker detection at a number of locations in the Tiaoxi River, indicates poor water quality and a significant human health risk associated with this watercourse. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT Tracking fecal contamination and pathogens in watersheds using molecular methods.