title: The Geonemertes problem (Nemertea)

text: A new genus of monostiliferous hoplonemerteans, Pantinonemertes gen. nov., provides evidence for the separate evolution of terrestrial nemerteans. The genus is established for two new species found in Australia, P. enalios sp. nov., an intertidal form, and P. winsori sp. nov., which lives in fallen timber in the supralittoral brackish water regions of mangrove swamps. One only of the known species of land nemerteans, Geonemertes agricola from Bermuda, closely resembles these two species morphologically and is transferred to the new genus as Pantinonemertes agricola. A re‐examination of all the known species of Geonemertes has shown that two major groups can be distinguished on the basis of morphological characters. In one group the rhynchocoel musculature is in two distinct layers, a frontal organ is present, the mid‐dorsal blood vessel has a single vascular plug, and the flame cells are binucleate and reinforced with cuticular support bars. It comprises the genus Pantinonemertes gen, nov, and the Pelaensis or Indopacific group of terrestrial nemerteans, for which the generic name Geonemertes is retained. In the second major group the rhynchocoel musculature is composed of interwoven longitudinal and circular fibres, there is no frontal organ, the mid‐dorsal blood vessel bears two vascular plugs, and the flame cells are mononucleate and lack support bars. Five genera, three of which are new, are distinguished in this group. Australian species are united in the genus Argonemertes gen. nov., and New Zealand forms comprise the genus Antiponemertes gen. nov., while Acteonemertes bathamae from New Zealand and the Auckland and Ocean Islands remains in a separate genus. Geonemertes nightingaleensis is transferred to a new genus, Katechonemertes gen. nov., and for Geonemertes chalicophora a previously used generic name, Leptonemertes, is adopted. A key to the terrestrial, brackish‐water and marine nemertean species described in the present paper is provided.


title: Lactose malabsorption in Central Australian Aboriginal children hospitalized with acute enteritis

text: The prevalence and duration of lactose malabsorption was studied in 64 Central Australian Aboriginal children requiring hospitalization for acute enteritis. Lactose malabsorption was determined by the breath‐hydrogen test. Sixty‐nine per cent were shown to malabsorb lactose, a figure similar to that for well nourished urban European children, hospitalized for acute enteritis. Whereas 90 per cent of the European children became lactose‐tolerant 1 month later, only three of 32 aboriginal children were lactose‐tolerant after 3 months. Lactose malabsorption was also associated with more frequent hospitalizations in affected children. Coronavirus‐like particles were the commonest agent isolated from Aboriginal children. The majority of the Aboriginal children were malnourished (< 80% standard weight for age) which may have been contributed to by their lactose malabsorption and explain why this failed to recover in the same way as European children. The possibility of lactose malabsorption must be taken into consideration when managing Aboriginal children with acute diarrhoeal disease and undernutrition. The use of the breath‐hydrogen test allows an accurate diagnosis of lactose malabsorption to be made in Aboriginal children with diarrhoea so that appropriate dietary management can be instituted.


title: Monitoring exposure to avian influenza viruses in wild mammals

text: 1.. Avian influenza (AI) viruses primarily circulate in wild waterfowl populations and are occasionally transmitted to domestic poultry flocks. However, the possible roles of other wildlife species, such as wild mammals, in AI virus ecology have not been adequately addressed. 2.. Due to their habitat and behaviour, many wild mammals may be capable of transmitting pathogens among wild and domestic populations. Exposure to AI viruses has been reported in an array of wild and domestic animals. The presence of wild mammals on farms has been identified as a risk factor for at least one poultry AI outbreak in North America. These reports suggest the need for seroprevalence studies examining the exposure of wild mammals to AI viruses. 3.. Serological tests are routinely used to assess domestic poultry, domestic swine and human exposure to influenza A viruses, but these tests have not been validated for use in wild mammals. As such, some of these protocols may require adjustments or may be inappropriate for use in serology testing of wild mammals. Herein, we review these serological techniques and evaluate their potential usefulness in AI surveillance of wild mammals. We call for care to be taken when applying serological tests outside their original area of validation, and for continued assay verification for multiple species and virus strains.


From evidence into action - Using the planning system to promote healthy weight environments


Our New President—M. Bishr Omary, MD, PhD, AGAF


Commentary: Going beyond the septum for complete repair of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy


COVID-19: Crisis Management in Congenital Heart Surgery


China curbs chemicals production


We're more negative after five nights of less sleep


title: Testing times

text: We will understand this pandemic only when we have more data


title: Attenborough's rallying cry

text: David Attenborough's latest film A Life on Our Planet is a powerful and unusually personal call to action, finds Timothy Revell


International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC) News and Information Page


title: A cuckoo in the nest

text: A young couple in need of a starter home meet an estate agent who is very definitely not what he seems, and nor is the estate he shows them. Vivarium packs a powerful punch, says Simon Ings


Don't miss


title: Code kept on ice for 1000 years

text: Microsoft-owned firm to go ahead with work to safeguard commonly used data


A new paradigm for drug development


272 Streptococcus Oralis Peritonitis in Peritoneal Dialysis: A Truly Nail-Biting Experience


docid: kjfmidob

title: Endings are hard

text: Coming out of lockdown will require difficult decisions


title: STEM CAREERS IN THE BREXIT ERA

text: The UK's exit from the EU has had a mixed effect on scientists' assessment of their international mobility and future job market prospects, according to the 2020 STEM Survey


2001 Poultry Science Subject Index


Reflections during turbulent times


Methods for producing a national infection prevention and control manual (NIPCM) in Scotland


In This Issue/Research Watch/News in Brief


1-week hypofractionated adjuvant whole-breast radiotherapy: towards a new standard?


News and Announcements


title: E-cigarette, or Vaping, Product Use-associated Lung Injury (EVALI): Acute Lung Illness within Hours of Switching from Traditional to E-cigarettes

text: 2019 has been a landmark year in the world of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), specifically e-cigarette and vaping. Numerous state health departments across the United States have voiced their concerns in the growing number of lung injury cases from e-cigarettes and vaping. Over the past few decades, many agencies have brought into light the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes, and despite popular belief, a growing movement has started to recognize the harmful effects of ENDS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released recommendations and provided health practitioners a methodology to identify and diagnose e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI). EVALI is a diagnosis of exclusion and comprises a variety of respiratory illnesses, with intubation rates nearing 32%. The most critical risk factor remains product use in the preceding 90 days, although a timeline on the development of symptoms or notable structural changes remains unknown. We present a case of acute lung injury in a traditional cigarette smoker that evolved within hours of switching to e-cigarettes.


AN EMERGING PARADIGM FOR PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE IN INTEGRATED CARE AMIDST A CRISIS


268 Nonuremic Calciphylaxis—A Rare Case


title: UK advisers to be named

text: Criticism of the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has prompted a move to more transparency, reports Adam Vaughan


Reflecting on a future ready for digital health


Always the end of days


docid: msgrsbnd

title: Trots op onze helden


Vijf vrije vragen aan: Jeroen Kistemaker


Dartelen


title: EU economic integration agreements, Brexit and trade

text: The effects of regionalism on trade have been extensively evaluated within a gravity model framework. With the expected exit of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), the prospect of regional disintegration has brought about a new impetus to studying trade policy effects. Using actual and forecast data for a panel of bilateral imports between the EU15 and the rest of the world, this paper examines the trade effects of EU economic integration agreements (EIAs), their evolution over time and the related counterfactual Brexit trade policy scenarios. Distinct trade effects are obtained for the EU trade related agreements; positive, significant and of similar magnitude for the EU and free trade agreement (FTA) coefficients, but negative and significant (and smaller in magnitude) for the regional economic partnership agreements (EPAs). The subperiod results suggest the positive coefficients of EU and FTA membership tend to diminish over time, implying earlier membership of EIAs came with greater trade benefits. Finally, in generating the predicted values for the trade effects of three alternative counterfactual Brexit scenarios (hard Brexit, hard Brexit plus, global Britain), the findings suggest an asymmetric effect depending on the perspective of the UK versus the EU. Whereas the UK’s trade would decline substantially with all three country groups (the EU, the FTAs and regional EPAs) and rise substantially with the rest of the world, only minor percentage changes are predicted for EU bilateral trade.


docid: lweqrczo

title: A review of open source ventilators for COVID-19 and future pandemics

text: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) threatens to overwhelm our medical infrastructure at the regional level causing spikes in mortality rates because of shortages of critical equipment, like ventilators. Fortunately, with the recent development and widespread deployment of small-scale manufacturing technologies like RepRap-class 3-D printers and open source microcontrollers, mass distributed manufacturing of ventilators has the potential to overcome medical supply shortages. In this study, after providing a background on ventilators, the academic literature is reviewed to find the existing and already openly-published, vetted designs for ventilators systems. These articles are analyzed to determine if the designs are open source both in spirit (license) as well as practical details (e.g. possessing accessible design source files, bill of materials, assembly instructions, wiring diagrams, firmware and software as well as operation and calibration instructions). Next, the existing Internet and gray literature are reviewed for open source ventilator projects and designs. The results of this review found that the tested and peer-reviewed systems lacked complete documentation and the open systems that were documented were either at the very early stages of design (sometimes without even a prototype) and were essentially only basically tested (if at all). With the considerably larger motivation of an ongoing pandemic, it is assumed these projects will garner greater attention and resources to make significant progress to reach a functional and easily-replicated system. There is a large amount of future work needed to move open source ventilators up to the level considered scientific-grade equipment, and even further work needed to reach medical-grade hardware. Future work is needed to achieve the potential of this approach by developing policies, updating regulations, and securing funding mechanisms for the development and testing of open source ventilators for both the current COVID19 pandemic as well as for future pandemics and for everyday use in low-resource settings.


title: Remembering people with dementia during the COVID-19 crisis.

text: This letter argues that we need to pay particular attention to people with dementia during this difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing rules and cocooning for people aged 70 years and over are now in place in Ireland to slow down the rate of infection and protect vulnerable older people. This letter argues that we need, more than ever, to assert the personhood of people with dementia at this difficult time. That means more person-centred care and practical support structures for family carers to allow them to continue to care at home in a safe and life-enhancing way. New public broadcasting initiatives could create information and communication channels for people with dementia and their carers, as well as demonstrating empathy and solidarity with their predicament. Government, the Department of Health, the HSE and the voluntary sector have risen to the challenge of COVID-19 in all sectors of society. So too have ordinary citizens. Now we need to unite even more to create an unyielding commitment and adherence to the principles of decency, justice and equity in the allocation of scarce health and social care resources. By doing this, we will demonstrate our caring potential and capacity in a way that reflects our shared humanity, not only in the current crisis, but into the future.


title: Parasites, Bacteria and Viruses

text: This chapter provides an overview of parasites, bacteria, and viruses. Flat worms that may affect a man's health are the trematodes or flukes and the cestodes or “tape-worms.” There are two groups of trematodes—(1) those that are hermaphrodites, and (2) those that are non-hermaphrodites. The chapter discusses how parasites can affect a man's health and it also explains their diagnosis, prevention, and control. A large number of bacteria do not cause disease. Some live in dead organic matter and are called saprophytes. Saprophytes are important in industrial and agricultural microbiology. Saprophytes are responsible, for the ripening of cheese, the fermentation of carbohydrate leading to alcohol production, and the acidification of milk. In nature, bacteria are involved in carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles. Thus, decomposition of organic matter is associated with the action of bacteria. Viruses differ from the other obligate intracellular parasites in certain important respects. Viruses are spread from patients, carriers, and healthy individuals who are in the incubation stage of the disease.


ICER releases evidence report on elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor for cystic fibrosis


INTERNATIONAL NEWS - June 2020


Issue Contents


Symptome unterscheiden – Allergie oder Atemwegsinfekt?


BOS release legal guidance


How much longer does NHS dentistry have left?


Increasing your digital influence


docid: cfvxyimc

title: NHS/Private practice gap widens


Social media: the good, the bad and the ugly


title: Rabies Prevention in Asia: Institutionalizing Implementation Capacities

text: Rabies in Asia and Africa contributes to over 99% of human rabies deaths that occur in the world today. The vast majority or 60% of these deaths are in Asia. Practically, more than four billion people in Asia or about 60% of the world’s population are at risk of getting rabies where an estimated 96% of documented human cases are from an infected dog bite. Canine-mediated rabies is one of the few communicable diseases that can possibly be eliminated by currently available vaccines and tools for veterinary and public health interventions. With a more comprehensive and integrated approach, it is expected that dog rabies will be eliminated in target areas, and there will be an eventual decline and disappearance of human rabies cases. The burden of rabies is primarily on human health but the disease control has to be focused on the animal source. The ultimate goal of a truly regional disease program is to control and eliminate dog-mediated rabies and protect and maintain rabies-free areas in Asia. Current regional efforts aim to strengthen the intercountry coordination, and technical and institutional capacities to manage dog rabies elimination programs. The regional and national implementation efforts provide strategic direction and cooperation to ensure successful implementation of rabies control measures and eventual elimination. The focus areas include human rabies prevention through pre- and postexposure prophylaxis, mass dog vaccination, surveillance and epidemiology, laboratory diagnostic capability, public awareness and risk communication, legislation, dog population management, and establishment and protection of rabies-free zones/areas. Existing mechanisms for implementation, when applied, give emphasis on One Health collaborations.


title: A Topological Data Analysis Approach on Predicting Phenotypes from Gene Expression Data

text: The goal of this study was to investigate if gene expression measured from RNA sequencing contains enough signal to separate healthy and afflicted individuals in the context of phenotype prediction. We observed that standard machine learning methods alone performed somewhat poorly on the disease phenotype prediction task; therefore we devised an approach augmenting machine learning with topological data analysis. We describe a framework for predicting phenotype values by utilizing gene expression data transformed into sample-specific topological signatures by employing feature subsampling and persistent homology. The topological data analysis approach developed in this work yielded improved results on Parkinson’s disease phenotype prediction when measured against standard machine learning methods. This study confirms that gene expression can be a useful indicator of the presence or absence of a condition, and the subtle signal contained in this high dimensional data reveals itself when considering the intricate topological connections between expressed genes.


title: Extending Maximal Perfect Haplotype Blocks to the Realm of Pangenomics

text: Recent work provides the first method to measure the relative fitness of genomic variants within a population that scales to large numbers of genomes. A key component of the computation involves finding conserved haplotype blocks, which can be done in linear time. Here, we extend the notion of conserved haplotype blocks to pangenomes, which can store more complex variation than a single reference genome. We define a maximal perfect pangenome haplotype block and give a linear-time, suffix tree based approach to find all such blocks from a set of pangenome haplotypes. We demonstrate the method by applying it to a pangenome built from yeast strains.


title: Comparing Integer Linear Programming to SAT-Solving for Hard Problems in Computational and Systems Biology

text: It is useful to have general-purpose solution methods that can be applied to a wide range of problems, rather than relying on the development of clever, intricate algorithms for each specific problem. Integer Linear Programming is the most widely-used such general-purpose solution method. It is successful in a wide range of problems. However, there are some problems in computational biology where integer linear programming has had only limited success. In this paper, we explore an alternate, general-purpose solution method: SAT-solving, i.e., constructing Boolean formulas in conjunctive normal form (CNF) that encode a problem instance, and using a SAT-solver to determine if the CNF formula is satisfiable or not. In three hard problems examined, we were very surprised to find the SAT-solving approach was dramatically better than the ILP approach in two problems; and a little slower, but more robust, in the third problem. We also re-examined and confirmed an earlier result on a fourth problem, using current ILP and SAT-solvers. These results should encourage further efforts to exploit SAT-solving in computational biology.


title: TreeSolve: Rapid Error-Correction of Microbial Gene Trees

text: Gene tree reconstruction is an important problem in phylogenetics. However, gene sequences often lack sufficient information to confidently distinguish between competing gene tree topologies. To overcome this limitation, the best gene tree reconstruction methods use a known species tree topology to guide the reconstruction of the gene tree. While such species-tree-aware gene tree reconstruction methods have been repeatedly shown to result in vastly more accurate gene trees, the most accurate of these methods often have prohibitively high computational costs. In this work, we introduce a highly computationally efficient and robust species-tree-aware method, named TreeSolve, for microbial gene tree reconstruction. TreeSolve works by collapsing weakly supported edges of the input gene tree, resulting in a non-binary gene tree, and then using new algorithms and techniques to optimally resolve the non-binary gene trees with respect to the given species tree in an appropriately and dynamically constrained search space. Using thousands of real and simulated gene trees, we demonstrate that TreeSolve significantly outperforms the best existing species-tree-aware methods for microbes in terms of accuracy, speed, or both. Crucially, TreeSolve also implicitly keeps track of multiple optimal gene tree reconstructions and can compute either a single best estimate of the gene tree or multiple distinct estimates. As we demonstrate, aggregating over multiple gene tree candidates helps distinguish between correct and incorrect parts of an error-corrected gene tree. Thus, TreeSolve not only enables rapid gene tree error-correction for large gene trees without compromising on accuracy, but also enables accounting of inference uncertainty.


title: PathOGiST: A Novel Method for Clustering Pathogen Isolates by Combining Multiple Genotyping Signals

text: In this paper we study the problem of clustering bacterial isolates into epidemiologically related groups from next-generation sequencing data. Existing methods for this problem mainly use a single genotyping signal, and either use a distance-based method with a pre-specified number of clusters, or a phylogenetic tree-based method with a pre-specified threshold. We propose PathOGiST, an algorithmic framework for clustering bacterial isolates by leveraging multiple genotypic signals and calibrated thresholds. PathOGiST uses different genotypic signals, clusters the isolates based on these individual signals with correlation clustering, and combines the clusterings based on the individual signals through consensus clustering. We implemented and tested PathOGiST on three different bacterial pathogens - Escherichia coli, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis - and we conclude by discussing further avenues to explore.


title: Gaps and Runs in Syntenic Alignments

text: Gene loss is the obverse of novel gene acquisition by a genome through a variety of evolutionary processes. It serves a number of functional and structural roles, compensating for the energy and material costs of gene complement expansion. A type of gene loss widespread in the lineages of plant genomes is “fractionation” after whole genome doubling or tripling, where one of a pair or triplet of paralogous genes in parallel syntenic contexts is discarded. The detailed syntenic mechanisms of gene loss, especially in fractionation, remain controversial. We focus on the the frequency distribution of gap lengths (number of deleted genes – not nucleotides) within syntenic blocks calculated during the comparison of chromosomes from two genomes. We mathematically characterize s simple model in some detail and show how it is an adequate description neither of the Coffea arabica subgenomes nor its two progenitor genomes. We find that a mixture of two models, a random, one-gene-at-a-time, model and a geometric-length distributed excision for removing a variable number of genes, fits well.


title: BOAssembler: A Bayesian Optimization Framework to Improve RNA-Seq Assembly Performance

text: High throughput sequencing of RNA (RNA-Seq) can provide us with millions of short fragments of RNA transcripts from a sample. How to better recover the original RNA transcripts from those fragments (RNA-Seq assembly) is still a difficult task. For example, RNA-Seq assembly tools typically require hyper-parameter tuning to achieve good performance for particular datasets. This kind of tuning is usually unintuitive and time-consuming. Consequently, users often resort to default parameters, which do not guarantee consistent good performance for various datasets. Results: Here we propose BOAssembler, a framework that enables end-to-end automatic tuning of RNA-Seq assemblers, based on Bayesian Optimization principles. Experiments show this data-driven approach is effective to improve the overall assembly performance. The approach would be helpful for downstream (e.g. gene, protein, cell) analysis, and more broadly, for future bioinformatics benchmark studies. Availability: https://github.com/shunfumao/boassembler.


docid: ydnxotsq

title: BESTox: A Convolutional Neural Network Regression Model Based on Binary-Encoded SMILES for Acute Oral Toxicity Prediction of Chemical Compounds

text: Compound toxicity prediction is a very challenging and critical task in the drug discovery and design field. Traditionally, cell or animal-based experiments are required to confirm the acute oral toxicity of chemical compounds. However, these methods are often restricted by availability of experimental facilities, long experimentation time, and high cost. In this paper, we propose a novel convolutional neural network regression model, named BESTox, to predict the acute oral toxicity ([Formula: see text]) of chemical compounds. This model learns the compositional and chemical properties of compounds from their two-dimensional binary matrices. Each matrix encodes the occurrences of certain atom types, number of bonded hydrogens, atom charge, valence, ring, degree, aromaticity, chirality, and hybridization along the SMILES string of a given compound. In a benchmark experiment using a dataset of 7413 observations (train/test 5931/1482), BESTox achieved a squared correlation coefficient ([Formula: see text]) of 0.619, root-mean-squared error (RMSE) of 0.603, and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.433. Despite of the use of a shallow model architecture and simple molecular descriptors, our method performs comparably against two recently published models.


title: VUKA – Imperativ unserer Welt

text: Die sogenannte VUKA-Welt bringt große Herausforderungen für Unternehmen und kann sogar zu einer Bedrohung werden. Aber sie ist für unternehmerisch denkende und kreativ handelnde Führungskräfte und Mitarbeitende auch ein „Spielfeld“ voller Optionen, um in diesem dynamischen Umfeld durch Vereinfachung des Kontextes, die Integration von Prozessen sowie eine angemessene Form von Führung und Kooperation sich bietende Chancen optimal zu nutzen. In diesem Kapitel erfahren Sie, dass …: VUKA mehr ist als nur ein Buzzword – es ist die Beschreibung und Realität des Umfelds, in dem wir leben. wir, um den komplexen Herausforderungen heute und in der Zukunft zu begegnen, lernen müssen, unterschiedliche Perspektiven einzubeziehen und die Vision einer „lernenden Organisation“ zum Leben zu erwecken. die Vielfalt der Perspektiven und Optionen Flexibilität, Kreativität und Innovation herausfordert und Werte wie auch das Bewusstsein für Prioritäten die Fundamente für Effizienz und Effektivität bleiben. die Daten- und die Informationsflut erfordern, diese systematisch zu analysieren und zu bewerten – um dann zu entscheiden, wie mit widersprüchlichen und volatilen Informationen umgegangen wird. in einem VUKA-Umfeld es keine Patentlösungen gibt und wir die Schwarmintelligenz der Organisation und ihrer Stakeholder brauchen, um die Herausforderungen zu meistern.


title: Stratified Test Alleviates Batch Effects in Single-Cell Data

text: Analyzing single-cell sequencing data across batches is challenging. We find that the Van Elteren test, a stratified version of Wilcoxon rank-sum test, elegantly mitigates the problem. We also modified the common language effect size to supplement this test, further improving its utility. On both simulated and real patient data we show the ability of Van Elteren test to control for false positives and false negatives. The effect size also estimates the differences between cell types more accurately.


title: Heuristics for Reversal Distance Between Genomes with Duplicated Genes

text: In comparative genomics, one goal is to find similarities between genomes of different organisms. Comparisons using genome features like genes, gene order, and regulatory sequences are carried out with this purpose in mind. Genome rearrangements are mutational events that affect large extensions of the genome. They are responsible for creating extant species with conserved genes in different positions across genomes. Close species—from an evolutionary point of view—tend to have the same set of genes or share most of them. When we consider gene order to compare two genomes, it is possible to use a parsimony criterion to estimate how close the species are. We are interested in the shortest sequence of genome rearrangements capable of transforming one genome into the other, which is named rearrangement distance. Reversal is one of the most studied genome rearrangements events. This event acts in a segment of the genome, inverting the position and possibly the orientation of genes in it. When the genome has no gene repetition, a common approach is to map it as a permutation such that each element represents a conserved block. When genomes have replicated genes, this mapping is usually performed using strings. The number of replicas depends on the organisms being compared, but in many scenarios, it tends to be small. In this work, we study the reversal distance between genomes with duplicated genes considering that the orientation of genes is unknown. We present three heuristics that use techniques like genetic algorithms and local search. We conduct experiments using a database of simulated genomes and compared our results with other algorithms from the literature.


title: Combining Networks Using Cherry Picking Sequences

text: Phylogenetic networks are important for the study of evolution. The number of methods to find such networks is increasing, but most such methods can only reconstruct small networks. To find bigger networks, one can attempt to combine small networks. In this paper, we study the Network Hybridization problem, a problem of combining networks into another network with low complexity. We characterize this complexity via a restricted problem, Tree-child Network Hybridization, and we present an FPT algorithm to efficiently solve this restricted problem.


title: A 3.5-Approximation Algorithm for Sorting by Intergenic Transpositions

text: Genome Rearrangements affect large stretches of genomes during evolution. One of the most studied genome rearrangement is the transposition, which occurs when a sequence of genes is moved to another position inside the genome. Mathematical models have been used to estimate the evolutionary distance between two different genomes based on genome rearrangements. However, many of these models have focused only on the (order of the) genes of a genome, disregarding other important elements in it. Recently, researchers have shown that considering existing regions between each pair of genes, called intergenic regions, can enhance the distance estimation in realistic data. In this work, we study the transposition distance between two genomes, but we also consider intergenic regions, a problem we name Sorting Permutations by Intergenic Transpositions (SbIT). We show that this problem is NP-hard and propose a 3.5-approximation algorithm for it.


title: Linear Time Algorithm for Tree-Child Network Containment

text: Phylogenetic networks are used to represent evolutionary scenarios in biology and linguistics. To find the most probable scenario, it may be necessary to compare candidate networks, to distinguish different networks, and to see when one network is embedded in another. Here, we consider the Network Containment problem, which asks whether a given network is contained in another network. We give a linear-time algorithm to this problem for the class of tree-child networks using the recently introduced tree-child sequences by Linz and Semple. We implement this algorithm in Python and show that the linear-time theoretical bound on the input size is achievable in practice.


title: Time Series Adjustment Enhancement of Hierarchical Modeling of Arabidopsis Thaliana Gene Interactions

text: Network models of gene interactions, using time course gene transcript abundance data, are computationally created using a genetic algorithm designed to incorporate hierarchical Bayesian methods with time series adjustments. The posterior probabilities of interaction between pairs of genes are based on likelihoods of directed acyclic graphs. This algorithm is applied to transcript abundance data collected from Arabidopsis thaliana genes. This study extends the underlying statistical and mathematical theory of the Norris-Patton likelihood by including time series adjustments.


title: Parallel Generalized Suffix Tree Construction for Genomic Data

text: After a decade of digitization and technological advancements, we have an abundance of usable genomic data, which provide unique insights into our well-being. However, such datasets are large in volume, and retrieving meaningful information from them is often challenging. Hence, different indexing techniques and data structures have been proposed to handle such a massive scale of data. We utilize one such technique: Generalized Suffix Tree (GST). In this paper, we introduce an efficient parallel generalized suffix tree construction algorithm that is scalable for arbitrary genomic datasets. Our construction mechanism employs shared and distributed memory architecture collectively while not posing any fixed, prior memory requirement as it uses external memory (disks). Our experimental results show that our proposed architecture offers around 4-times speedup with respect to the sequential algorithm with only 16 parallel processors. The experiments on different datasets and parameters also exhibit the scalability of the execution time. In addition, we utilize different string queries and demonstrate their execution time on such tree structure, illustrating the efficacy and usability of GST for genomic data.


docid: rtoxnrve

title: Safety concerns with higher dosage chloroquine in COVID-19 patients


High incidence of ADRs in COVID-19 patients in China


Gute Frage - gute Antwort: Zahnmedizin in Corona-Zeiten: Wie arbeitet es sich Seite an Seite mit dem Virus?


Einstieg


ACEI inhibitors and ARBs do not increase severity of COVID-19


Facharztstandard und Leitlinien im Arzthaftungsrecht


Antimalarial use in COVID-19 patients requires close monitoring


Mit dem FVDZ durch die Corona-Krise


title: Viruses, biosecurity and specific pathogen-free stocks in shrimp aquaculture

text: The greatest threat to the future of world shrimp aquaculture is disease, in particular the virulent untreatable viruses, infectious hypodermal and haematopoietic necrosis virus (IHHNV), taura syndrome virus (TSV), yellow head virus (YHV), and white spot syndrome virus (WSSV). To overcome these hazards, the industry of the future must be based on: (i) specific pathogen-free and genetically improved shrimp stocks; (ii) biosecure systems including enclosed, reduced water-exchange/increased water-reuse culture systems; (iii) biosecure management practices; and (iv) co-operative industry-wide disease control strategies. Specific pathogen-free shrimp are those that are known to be free of specified pathogens and such stocks will ensure that seed shrimp are not the conduit for introduction of pathogens and that if pathogens are encountered the stocks will not be severely affected. Commercially acceptable biosecure culture systems that are under cover and use recirculated sea water will need to be developed for shrimp production. Adherence to operating protocols that incorporate strict biosecurity practices, including restricted access and disinfection strategies, will need to become standard. Co-operative efforts will include: early warning surveillance; co-ordination of harvest and water exchange schedules of contaminated ponds; processor co-operation to ensure that processing wastes are not threats; quick response to outbreaks.


title: Effective Poyang Lake Conservation? A Local Ecology View from Downstream Involving Internationally Migratory Birds When Trying to Buffer and Manage Water from HKH with ‘Modern’ Concepts

text: Poyang Lake represents a major wetland system in Asia fed by the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region. Poyang Lake has a deep legacy and affected many dynasties, cultures and their wealth and fate. Further, this region is a biodiversity hotspot of international relevance featuring fish abundances and major wintering sites for birds of international relevance, e.g. crane species (including the Siberian Crane), geese and songbirds. The status of this ecosystem is currently on the vast decline with water areas and amounts shrinking. Recent and modern upstream processes are a big driver of this situation such as the Three Gorges Dam and dykes, as well as new regional policies and activities related to farming, tourism, urbanization, sand mining. Poyang Lake plays a big international role and is to be considered in the globalization context if serious impacts like global change are to be handled in an effective and relevant measure to safeguard those landscapes and all its members.


title: Führung zwischen Tradition und Wandel

text: Die Anzahl an Führungsstilen ist nahezu unüberschaubar geworden, ebenso die Zahl der Veröffentlichungen hierzu. Ein Beispiel: Der mediative Führungsstil soll als Weiterführung des demokratischen Führungsstils dazu beitragen, dass anstehende Themen und Anliegen, von der Faktenklärung über den Perspektivenwechsel hin zu zukunftsfähigen Lösungsoptionen, von den Betroffenen selbst erarbeitet werden. Dadurch entsteht Qualitätssicherung, weil gemeinsame Interessen und Bedürfnisse sich in individuell auf die Organisation abgestimmten Lösungen wiederfinden. Eine Modeerscheinung? Schwer zu beurteilen, da viele Führungsstile zeitlich gesehen recht jung und nicht immer mit wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen unterlegt sind. Die transformationale Führung, die vertrauensbasierte Führung, Digital Leadership, Distance Leadership und Agile Führung sind Führungsansätze, die sich in der Literatur und Praxis etabliert haben. Auch in der Führungswelt von Banken und Sparkassen erfahren diese Führungsstile zunehmend Beachtung. Aber braucht es wirklich neue Führungsansätze oder liefern die traditionellen Theorien und Konzepte, wie die Führungsprinzipien von Peter F. Drucker, bereits genug Impulse dafür, was eine wirksame Führung in der Praxis von Finanzinstituten ausmacht?


title: Aktuelle und künftige Herausforderungen für Führung aus den Umwelt- und Umfeldfaktoren des Unternehmens

text: Führungskräfte stehen in der Verantwortung, für den Erfolg ihrer Mitarbeiter*innen Sorge zu tragen, diese zu fördern und zu fordern. Dies geschieht im Kontext der aktuellen und künftigen Unternehmensentwicklung, welche wiederum den Rahmen für die Rolle der Führungskräfte und die damit verbundenen Führungsaufgaben bildet. Die aktuellen Rahmenbedingungen, mit denen sich Banken und Sparkassen in einem wirtschaftlich schwierigen Umfeld auseinandersetzen müssen, erschweren eine stabile, auf Kontinuität ausgerichtete Unternehmenspolitik. Die damit verbundenen Unsicherheiten verleiten das Management, „auf Sicht“ zu führen. Erfolgt dies zudem im Gesamthaus unabgestimmt und mit unkonkreter Vorstellung zur Entwicklung des Geschäftsmodells, übertragen sich diese Unsicherheiten auf die Führungskräfte und am Ende auf die Mitarbeiter*innen des Hauses.


title: When Micro Drives the Macro: A Fresh Look at Disease and its Massive Contributions in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya

text: The outbreaks of emerging and reemerging diseases have a high impact on the human and animal health because they are the underlying causes of disability, death, and long-term illness. For many regions those details are not, or just poorly known. Here we present on the morbidity and mortality in faunal diversities including domestic and wild species caused by various viral, bacterial, parasitic, and fungal diseases prevalent in Nepal and relevant for the wider Hindu Kush Himalaya. In addition, we provide details how antibiotic resistivity, vectors, and zoonosis have resulted on a landscape-scale in the huge public and veterinary health problem has been dealt with in the context of Nepal and the wider region.


title: Viruses of the Serengeti: patterns of infection and mortality in African lions

text: 1. We present data on the temporal dynamics of six viruses that infect lions (Panthera leo) in the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. These populations have been studied continuously for the past 30 years, and previous research has documented their seroprevalence for feline herpesvirus, feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), feline calicivirus, feline parvovirus, feline coronavirus and canine distemper virus (CDV). A seventh virus, feline leukaemia virus (FeLV), was absent from these animals. 2. Comprehensive analysis reveals that feline herpesvirus and FIV were consistently prevalent at high levels, indicating that they were endemic in the host populations. Feline calici‐, parvo‐ and coronavirus, and CDV repeatedly showed a pattern of seroprevalence that was indicative of discrete disease epidemics: a brief period of high exposure for each virus was followed by declining seroprevalence. 3. The timing of viral invasion suggests that different epidemic viruses are associated with different minimum threshold densities of susceptible hosts. Furthermore, the proportion of susceptibles that became infected during disease outbreaks was positively correlated with the number of susceptible hosts at the beginning of each outbreak. 4. Examination of the relationship between disease outbreaks and host fitness suggest that these viruses do not affect birth and death rates in lions, with the exception of the 1994 outbreak of canine distemper virus. Although the endemic viruses (FHV and FIV) were too prevalent to measure precise health effects, there was no evidence that FIV infection reduced host longevity.


title: Evaluation of ITS PCR and RFLP for Differentiation and Identification of Brewing Yeast and Brewery ‘Wild’ Yeast Contaminants

text: A reference library of ITS PCR/RFLP profiles was collated and augmented to evaluate its potential for routine identification of domestic brewing yeast and known ‘wild’ yeast contaminants associated with wort, beer and brewing processes. This library contains information on band sizes generated by restriction digestion of the ribosomal RNA‐encoding DNA (rDNA) internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region consisting of the 5.8 rRNA gene and two flanking regions (ITS1 and ITS2) with the endonucleases CfoI, HaeIII, HinfI and includes strains from 39 non‐Saccharomyces yeast species as well as for brewing and non‐brewing strains of Saccharomyces. The efficacy of the technique was assessed by isolation of 59 wild yeasts from industrial fermentation vessels and conditioning tanks and by matching their ITS amplicon sizes and RFLP profiles with those of the constructed library. Five separate, non‐introduced yeast taxa were putatively identified. These included Pichia species, which were associated with conditioning tanks and Saccharomyces species isolated from fermentation vessels. Strains of the lager yeast S. pastorianus could be reliably identified as belonging to either the Saaz or Frohberg hybrid group by restriction digestion of the ITS amplicon with the enzyme HaeIII. Frohberg group strains could be further sub‐grouped depending on restriction profiles generated with HinfI.


title: Climate change, environmental sustainability and health care quality

text: The challenges for health care continue to grow and in the 21st century healthcare policymakers and providers will need to respond to the developing impact of global warming and the environmental impact of healthcare service delivery. This cannot be viewed apart from the current Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which is likely to be linked to the climate crisis.


title: The Legal and Medical Necessity of Abortion Care Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

text: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, states have ordered the cessation of non-essential healthcare. Unfortunately, many conservative states have sought to capitalize on those orders to halt abortion care. In this short paper, we argue that abortion should not fall under any state’s non-essential healthcare order. Major medical organizations recognize that abortion is essential healthcare that must be provided even in a pandemic, and the law recognizes abortion as a time-sensitive constitutional right. Finally, we examine the constitutional arguments as to why enforcing these orders against abortion providers should not stand constitutional scrutiny. We conclude that no public health purpose can be served by this application because abortion uses less scarce resources and involves fewer contacts with healthcare professionals than prenatal care and delivery assistance, which is continuing to be provided in this public health emergency.


title: How the COVID-19 Response is Altering the Legal and Regulatory Landscape on Abortion

text: The response to COVID-19 has been mired in political debates. In a moment of scarcity, especially with regard to medical equipment and capacity, the question of who deserves the few available resources becomes front and center. It is in this context that abortion access has been injected into the political and medical response to COVID-19. There are three main sites of the ongoing abortion debate in the COVID-19 context. First, in the application of the Hyde Amendment to the CARES Act, second, in the attempt by state legislators to classify abortion as an elective procedure that cannot be performed during a time of PPE and personnel shortages, and, finally, a move by state attorney generals (AGs) to seek greater access abortion via telehealth through changing the FDA rules on a necessary abortifacient. This essay describes the current status of the terrain and the potential long-term implications on abortion access and care.


title: The United Kingdom’s Coronavirus Act, Deprivations of Liberty, and The Right to Liberty and Security of the Person

text: Governments across the world have enforced emergency measures in response to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (henceforth ‘the coronavirus’) pandemic. Indeed, the UK government has enacted emergency legislation in its response by passing the Coronavirus Act 2020. Amongst other things, this act extends existing statutory powers to impose deprivations of liberty for public health purposes. The extension of such powers naturally raises concerns about whether their use will be compatible with human rights law. In particular, it is unclear whether their use will fall within the public heath exception to the Article 5 right to liberty and security of the person in the European Convention of Human Rights, enshrined in the UK law by virtue of the Human Rights Act 1998. In this paper, I use the Coronavirus Act introduced in the UK as a case study of how emergency legislation enacted in a pandemic may conflict with human rights law enshrined elsewhere in domestic law. Having outlined key features of existing statutory powers in the UK, and how they are extended under the Coronavirus Act, I briefly consider how the European Court of Human Rights has interpreted the public health exception to Article 5 rights. This analysis suggests two grounds on which deprivations of liberty performed in accordance with the emergency legislation introduced in the UK might be vulnerable to claims of Article 5 rights violations. First, the absence of specified time limits on certain deprivations of liberty means that they may fail the requirement of legal certainty championed by the European Court in its interpretation of the public health exception. Second, the Coronavirus Act’s extension of powers to individual’s lacking public health expertise may undermine the extent to which the act will ensure that deprivations of liberty are both necessary and proportionate.


docid: vyvupuzy

title: Africa and counterfeit pharmaceuticals in the times of COVID-19


CDJ Editorial—What is this Covid-19 crisis?


Against All Odds: Education in Germany Coping with Covid-19


Suspected Acute Abdomen as an Extrapulmonary Manifestation of COVID-19 Infection()


ASK CAMTS – POLICY CHANGES April 2020


docid: ozoxqzbi

title: Sédation et fin de vie dans le cadre de la loi Claes Léonetti


Finding Refuge in the ACC Family in Unprecedented Times


Islamic finance in Russia: A market review and the legal environment


title: Challenges of Tracking and Documenting Open Source Dependencies in Products: A Case Study

text: Software vendors need to manage the dependencies of the open source components used in their products. Without this management, license compliance would be impossible, export restrictions could not be maintained, and security vulnerabilities would remain unknown to the vendor. The management of these dependencies has grown in an ad-hoc fashion in most companies. As such, vendors find it hard to learn from each other and improve practices. To address this problem, we performed exploratory single-case study research at one large established software vendor. We gathered and analyzed the key challenges of tracking and documenting open source dependencies in products. We wanted to understand whether these ad-hoc solutions could be based on a single unified conceptual model for managing dependencies. Our study suggests that underlying the various point solutions that we found at this vendor lies a conceptual model that we tentatively call the product (architecture) model. In future cross-vendor work, we will investigate whether this conceptual model can be expanded to become a unifying model for all open source dependency management.


docid: junsirvf

title: The Ecosystem of openKONSEQUENZ, A User-Led Open Source Foundation

text: Companies without expertise in software development can opt to form consortia to develop open source software to meet their needs, as an alternative to the build-or-buy decision. Such user-led foundations are little understood, due to a limited number of published examples. In particular, almost nothing is known about the ecosystems surrounding user-led foundations. Our work seeks to address this gap, through an exploratory qualitative survey of openKONSEQUENZ, from the German energy sector. We find that the technological goals are quite homogeneous, independent of a participant’s role in the ecosystem, but that economic conflicts exist between foundation members and supplier companies due to the consortium’s efforts to transform the software market structure to limit dependency on specific vendors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this chapter (10.1007/978-3-030-47240-5_1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


title: Using of Open-Source Technologies for the Design and Development of a Speech Processing System Based on Stemming Methods

text: This article discusses the idea of developing an intelligent and customizable automated system for real-time text and voice dialogs with the user. This system can be used for almost any subject area, for example, to create an automated robot - a call center operator or smart chat bots, assistants, and so on. This article presents the developed flexible architecture of the proposed system. The system has many independent submodules. These modules work as interacting microservices and use several speech recognition schemes, including a decision support submodule, third-party speech recognition systems and a post-processing subsystem. In this paper, the post-processing module of the recognized text is presented in detail on the example of Russian and English dictionary models. The proposed submodule also uses several processing steps, including the use of various stemming methods, the use of word stop-lists or other lexical structures, the use of stochastic keyword ranking using a weight table, etc.


docid: mbofguhg

title: InnoMetrics Dashboard: The Design, and Implementation of the Adaptable Dashboard for Energy-Efficient Applications Using Open Source Tools

text: Increasing amount of data the organizations worldwide have at their disposal lead to the need to structure, organize and present the information obtained from it. That is because, in today’s rapid-changing business environment, managers and executives need to be able to gain crucial insights about the ongoing project in as little time as possible. Recently, energy efficiency has become a greater field of research, and companies started concentrating on monitoring energy-related metrics. In addition, many of them have built their own internal tools (dashboards) to do just this. However, one of the major drawbacks of building specialized tools is the lack of adaptability. That is, they are often tailored to only one person (e.g. CEO), or a small group of them (e.g. board of directors, managers). Furthermore, the combination of metrics that is displayed to them does not change over time. This is a problem because most likely there exists a better metric combination that would allow users to get the crucial insights faster. To fill this gap, our ongoing research focuses on making the dashboards adaptable to multiple roles within the organization while optimizing for a certain goal. In some scenarios the dashboard’s goal may be to detect defects, in others it may be to generate the most profit. As our primary research interest is to amplify energy efficiency, we have chosen that to be our dashboard’s goal. Our previous work suggests that in order to handle compound metrics at scale it is needed to represent the dashboard as a complex system. This paper presents the design and the architecture of our proposed solution synergizing the notions from complexity theory, software architecture and user experience (UX) design.


title: Using FLOSS for Storing, Processing and Linking Corpus Data

text: Corpus data is widely used to solve different linguistic, educational and applied problems. The Tatar corpus management system (http://tugantel.tatar) is specifically developed for Turkic languages. The functionality of our corpus management system includes a search of lexical units, morphological and lexical search, a search of syntactic units, a search of N-grams and others. The search is performed using open source tools (database management system MariaDB, Redis data store). This article describes the process of choosing FLOSS for the main components of our system and also processing a search query and building a linked open dataset based on corpus data.


title: An Open Source Environment for an Agile Development Model

text: Tools are of paramount importance in automating software engineering tasks; although the Agile Manifesto prefers “individuals and their interactions over processes and tools”, some agile development activities make no exception and can be automated effectively and successfully. In process frameworks like Scrum or similar ones some activities are in fact quite structured and need specific tool support. Hence, it is interesting to study the combination of specific agile practices with OSS tools. In this paper we introduce the Compositional Agile System (CAS), an environment created to support iAgile and automate some of its tasks using OSS tools. iAgile is a Scrum-like model designed to develop critical systems in the military domain .


title: The Development of Data Collectors in Open-Source System for Energy Efficiency Assessment

text: The paper is devoted to the development of the data collectors for Windows OS and MacOS. The purpose of these plugins is to collect the process metrics from the user’s device and send it to the back-end for further processing. The overall open source framework is aimed at energy efficiency analysis of the developing software products. The development presented here as a sequence of the life cycle stages, including requirements analysis, design, implementation and testing. Specifics of the implementation for each targeted operating system are given.


title: Emotional Contagion in Open Software Collaborations

text: Emotional contagion is a mechanism by which affect experienced by one person in a group is transmitted to others in the same group. When this happens, the group dynamic is influenced. This paper provides a method to analyze an Open Software project to determine the connection between emotional contagion and software production in such an environment, if any. The project change management database is mined to extract change comments in chronological order and by user id. Sentiment analysis is employed to determine affect in the change originating from each userid. File changes are tracked to link them together in the same areas, using a temporal and file locality principle. The correlation between affect and area is then used to prove or disprove whether or not emotional contagion influences open software production. Although in this paper the proposed method is applied to only one project, the method is general and can be reused for experimental validation.


title: An Empirical Investigation of Sentiment Analysis of the Bug Tracking Process in Libre Office Open Source Software

text: In this work we are studying the sentiment in Open Source Software projects and more specifically in the process of bug reporting, to investigate the human factor, namely, the feedback from the community (end-users, developers, testers, etc.). One of the characteristics for which Open Source Software has gained attention, over the years, is the fact that it is continuously being tested and maintained by its community of volunteers. Sentiment analysis, a rapidly growing field, can enrich software evaluation with a social aspect. Results suggest that FLOSS projects’ bug reports can potentially constitute a rich emotionally - imbued information source.


title: MegaM@Rt2 EU Project: Open Source Tools for Mega-Modelling at Runtime of CPSs

text: In this paper, we overview our experiences of developing large set of open source tools in ECSEL JU European project called MegaM@Rt2 whose main objective is to propose a scalable model-based framework incorporating methods and tools for the continuous development and runtime support of complex software-intensive Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). We briefly present the MegaM@Rt2 concepts, discuss our approach for open source, enumerate tools and give an example of a tools selection for a specific industrial context. Our goal is to introduce the reader with open source tools for the model-based engineering of CPSs suitable for diverse industrial applications.


title: An Empirical Analysis of the Maintainability Evolution of Open Source Systems

text: Maintainability is a key factor for the evolution of an open source system due to the highly distributed development teams that contribute to many projects. In the literature there are a number of different approaches that has been developed to evaluate the maintainability of a product but almost each method has been developed in an independent way without leveraging on the existing work and with almost no independent evaluation of the performance of the models. In most of the cases, the models are only validated through a limited set of projects only by the people that propose the specific approach. This paper is a first step towards a different direction focusing on the independent application of the existing models to popular open source projects.


title: How the Cathedral Embraced the Bazaar, and the Bazaar Became a Cathedral

text: Over the past 20 years, open source has become a widely adopted approach to develop software. Code repositories provide software to power cars, phones, and other things that are considered proprietary. In parallel, proprietary development has evolved from rigid, centralized waterfall approaches to agile, iterative development. In this paper, we share our experiences regarding this co-evolution of open and closed source from the viewpoints of tools, practices, and organizing the development work, concluding that today’s bazaars and cathedrals have much more common characteristics than those that separate them.


title: Combining Two Modelling Approaches: GQM and KAOS in an Open Source Project

text: GQM is a software metrics method that produces meaningful and appropriate measurement metrics based on the specific goals of an organisation. KAOS goal modelling is a software engineering approach that allows to identify high level goals of an organisation, refine and expand them into lower-level more concrete goals and assign them to specific system agents. The two approaches can be combined, such that the goal modelling is used to derive specific goals rooted in the organisational context, policies and strategies of an organisation. The GQM, in turn, utilises the derived specific goals to produce appropriate and meaningful metrics that can be used to obtain valuable insights and track the state and progress of the formulated goals. Moreover, both models can be presented within a single diagram, thus providing an expressive and concise overview of the systems goals, actors and measurements. The suggested combination is then applied in the context of an open source project, followed by the discussion on potential benefits and drawbacks of using the two approaches.


title: The Strategic Technical Debt Management Model: An Empirical Proposal

text: Increasing development complexity in software applications raises major concerns about technical debt management, also in Open Source environments. A strategic management perspective provides organizations with an action map to pursue business’ targets with limited resources. This article presents the Strategic Technical Debt Management Model (STDMM) to provide practitioners with an actionable roadmap to manage their technical debt properly, considering both social and technical aspects. To do so, we pursued a theoretical mapping, exploiting a set of interviews of 124 carefully selected and well-informed domain experts of the IT financial sector.


title: Development of Cloud-Based Microservices to Decision Support System

text: Intelligent systems of simulation become a key stage of the scheduling of companies and industries work. Most of the existing decision support systems are desktop software. Today there is a need to use durability, flexibility, availability and crossplatforming information technologies. The paper proposes the idea of working cloud based decision support system BPsim.Web and this one consists of some set of services and tools. The model of the multiagent resources conversion process is considered. The process of the simulation model developing via BPsim.Web is described. An example of the real process model is given.


title: An XQuery Specification for Requests with Preferences on XML Databases

text: An exact query is a query in which the user specifies precisely what to retrieve from a database (XML or relational database). For these queries only data that strictly respect all user’s conditions is returned. XML documents are generally semi-structured. Due to the non-existence or lack of knowledge of the model of the document being queried, when exact queries are used, there is a high risk of obtaining an empty result (in the case of too specific queries) or too large (in the case of too vague queries). In contrast to exact queries, requests with preferences aim to return only the most relevant results in order to avoid empty or too important results as much as possible. To achieve this goal, requests with preferences generally consist of two parts: the first part is used to express strict constraints and the second part to express preferences or wishes. The satisfaction of both parts increases the relevance of the corresponding results. This paper presents XQuery preference, an extension of the XQuery language, that allows to express requests with preferences relating to both the values and the structure of an XML document. A representation model of such requests based on the Generalized Tree Pattern (GTP) model is also proposed in order to allow an evaluation of these requests through a tree pattern matching process. Integration of the proposed language in open source implementations of XQuery like BaseX, Berkeley DB XML, eXist-db, Galax and much more, will allow users to get much more relevant responses to their concerns.


title: An Open Source Solution for Smart Contract-Based Parking Management

text: This paper discusses an open-source solution for smart-parking in highly urbanized areas. We have conducted interviews with domain experts, defined user stories and proposed a system architecture with a case study. Our solution allows integration of independent owners of parking space into one unified system, that facilitates parking in a smart city. The adoption of such a system raises trust issues among the stakeholders involved in the management of the parking. In order to tackle such issues, we propose a smart contract-based solution encapsulating sensitive information, agreements and processes into transparent and distributed smart contracts .


title: Energy Efficient Software Development Process Evaluation for MacOS Devices

text: InnoMetrics is the system that aims at collecting software development process metrics in a non-invasive way to access and optimize the development process and its efficiency. This paper demonstrates the development and analysis of energy consumption of MacOS systems based on the software process measurement data. It represents the experience of the development of MacOS system collector and Transfer, in addition to the user interface and early analysis of energy consumption metrics calculations.


title: .NET Runtime and Tools for Tizen Operating System

text: Samsung Electronics and Microsoft Corporation have been developing open source implementation of .NET platform called .NET Core since 2016. This platform is usually used for implementation of server-side and desktop applications, and Samsung has also adopted .NET Core virtual machine and libraries for Tizen OS. This solution was integrated into various ARM CPU based devices e.g. smart watches, TVs and other electronic devices. Tizen has always supported variety of languages and SDKs for developers. .NET has greatly expanded this variety by supporting new tools and new languages. This paper describes major challenges that we have encountered during integration of .NET to Tizen OS as well as optimizations, which were applied to .NET Core to make applications startup and memory consumption better on variety of devices.


title: Using Open Source Libraries in the Development of Control Systems Based on Machine Vision

text: The possibility of the boundaries detection in the images of crushed ore particles using a convolutional neural network is analyzed. The structure of the neural network is given. The construction of training and test datasets of ore particle images is described. Various modifications of the underlying neural network have been investigated. Experimental results are presented.


Commentary: Reimbursement Models in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery: The Un-Refined ‘All Patients Refined Diagnosis-Related Group’


The COVID-19 Threat: An Opportunity to Rethink the European Economic Constitution and European Private Law


Neues aus dem "ZNS-Hauptstadtstudio"


COVID-19-Infektion ist kein Arbeitsunfall


Soll das Versenden von Arztbriefen abgewürgt werden?


Editorial: RNA Regulation in Development and Disease


Cover 1


The American journal of preventive cardiology: On a mission to help define a specialty


News and Notes


Brief Overview of This Month's JACI


Editorial: Proceedings of ISPMF 2018 - Plant Molecular Farming


title: SFC reaches 1000 EFOY Pro fuel cells deployed in Singapore

text: German-based SFC Energy says that the 1000th EFOY Pro direct methanol fuel cell has been deployed to supply reliable off-grid power for flood monitoring, robots, border surveillance, and public health & safety infrastructure in Singapore.


docid: zprwbdla

title: Nel in green hydrogen strategic collaboration with Kvaerner

text: In Norway, Nel ASA has entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company Kværner AS, to collaborate on specific ‘green’ hydrogen projects and standardisation of solutions for large-scale hydrogen production plants.


title: Observations, Conclusions, Perspective

text: Uranium enrichment and plutonium production capabilities are treated under the NPT regime as legal activities if the country pursues them for peaceful purposes. Yet, this is considered to be the “Achilles’ heel” of the international non-proliferation regime, because the country that possesses these capabilities could use them to illegally and unexpectedly break-out of the regime and its obligations and pursue a military nuclear program, that means to build nuclear weapons.


title: First 3Emotion fuel cell electric buses in Denmark enter service

text: The North Jutland Region and the Municipality of Aalborg in Denmark have announced the operation of the first fuel cell electric bus in Denmark on 10 March, which was quickly followed by two more buses starting operation on 16 March.


Angst vor der eigenen Systemirrelevanz


Call for Immediate Action: Eine Stellungnahme zum Konzept der AG KRITIS „Das Cyber-Hilfswerk“


beA — in Quarantäne?


Die Abhängigkeit der Unternehmen von Plattformbetreibern und die Corona-Krise: Ein Katalysator für die Regulierung?


Von Phishen und Hamstern: Systemische Risiken der Epidemie für die Cybersicherheit


title: Strategies for Addressing Mouth-Breathing Treatment with an “Adequate” Nose

text: Now that we have discussed and analyzed strategies to surgically achieve an adequately functioning and appearing nose, additional treatments are still required in many cases to achieve jaw closure due to limited musculoskeletal tone of the maxilla and mandible, as we described in Chaps. 4 and 5. From surgical jaw expansion, orthodontic treatments to jaw closure straps and appliances, these strategies are considered and evaluated in this chapter.


Mitteilungen der GI im Informatik Spektrum 3/2020


Aus der Not eine Tugend gemacht


Die Kunden nicht alleine lassen


Verhaltener Optimismus


docid: abiyvgfh

title: Aktuelles


SARS-CoV-2 infection associated with diplopia and anti-acetylcholine receptor antibodies()()


docid: koqgstph

title: Propositions pour la prise en charge des troubles du sommeil et de la vigilance en période épidémique COVID-19. Propositions conjointes de la Société française de recherche et médecine du sommeil, la Société de pneumologie de langue française et la Fédération française de pneumologie. Version 1–03 05 2020

text: Since mid-March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic has led to the suspension of sleep clinic and sleep center operations. Although rarely urgent, sleep disorder management cannot be postponed indefinitely. Proposals to clarify the modalities for the gradual resumption of sleep medicine services have been developed using the CORE methodology, which allows for rapid expert consensus when the evidence-based data is weak. The performance of diagnostic sleep and alertness tests must be limited to patients for whom the benefit–risk balance is indisputably favorable and when the results are likely to have a decisive impact on a therapeutic strategy, with priority being given to teleconsultation and ambulatory recordings. Strict adherence to physical separation and other barrier measures, the use of protective equipment by staff and of single-use equipment whenever possible, and strict cleaning and disinfection procedures for equipment and premises should limit the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission between patient and staff members. The proposals of the expert group are valid at the time of their publication but will be re-evaluated and updated regularly according to the development of scientific knowledge and the recommendations of the health authorities based on the evolution of the epidemic.


Perils of Intermaxillary Fixation Screws


Aerosol prevention in Osteosynthesis for Maxillofacial Trauma — a Technical Note


title: Assessing international relations in undergraduate education

text: This paper advocates a holistic approach to assessing international relations in undergraduate education, which revolves around: (a) essays and (b) active learning-related tasks, such as simulation reflective statements/reports and performance. The paper argues that, on the one hand, academic essays are far from irrelevant and it is difficult to overestimate their practical significance. On the other hand, active learning-related tasks are best utilised as a supplementary assessment, expanding the students’ range of transferable skills. The assessment structure advocated in this paper results from a holistic approach to assessment design, which includes teacher’s own experience, familiarity with pedagogical scholarship and input from students. This last element is the least common even though it makes sense to understand how students see their own assessment. To that end, the paper shares the results of a pilot project run at one of the UK universities, which engaged students as partners in rethinking their assessment.


The UK COVID-19 Response: A Behavioural Irony?


title: Extended urbanisation and the spatialities of infectious disease: Demographic change, infrastructure and governance

text: This paper argues that contemporary processes of extended urbanisation, which include suburbanisation, post-suburbanisation and peri-urbanisation, may result in increased vulnerability to infectious disease spread. Through a review of existing literature at the nexus of urbanisation and infectious disease, we consider how this (potential) increased vulnerability to infectious diseases in peri- or suburban areas is in fact dialectically related to socio-material transformations on the metropolitan edge. In particular, we highlight three key factors influencing the spread of infectious disease that have been identified in the literature: demographic change, infrastructure and governance. These have been chosen given both the prominence of these themes and their role in shaping the spread of disease on the urban edge. Further, we suggest how a landscape political ecology framework can be useful for examining the role of socio-ecological transformations in generating increased risk of infectious disease in peri- and suburban areas. To illustrate our arguments we will draw upon examples from various re-emerging infectious disease events and outbreaks around the world to reveal how extended urbanisation in the broadest sense has amplified the conditions necessary for the spread of infectious diseases. We thus call for future research on the spatialities of health and disease to pay attention to how variegated patterns of extended urbanisation may influence possible outbreaks and the mechanisms through which such risks can be alleviated.


EP News: Quality Improvement and Outcomes: Physician Burnout


Practice Notes from the AAAI


title: A quantitative study of day–night changes in the spatial distribution of insects in a stony stream

text: 1.. As many invertebrates are nocturnal, their spatial distribution may change from day to night. This behavioural aspect of their population dynamics has been ignored, but is now examined for the first time by testing the hypotheses: (i) a power function was a suitable model for the spatial distribution of common species of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera in a stony stream; (ii) the spatial distribution varied between species but was similar within species for larvae greater and smaller than half‐size; (iii) diurnal and nocturnal spatial distributions were significantly different for each species. To ensure that the conclusions were consistent, large samples (n = 30) were taken near midday and midnight in April, June and November over 4 years. 2.. Twenty–one species were taken in sufficient numbers for the analyses; seven species were too sparse to be included. The first hypothesis was supported. A power function, relating spatial variance (s (2)) to mean (m), was an excellent fit in all the analyses (P < 0·001, r (2) > 0·95), i.e. the spatial variance was density–dependent. The power b, often used as an ‘index of aggregation’, varied in the range 0·88–2·50. 3.. Most analyses supported the second hypothesis. For four species, the difference between the two size groups was just significant (P < 0·05), but was due to inadequate data for three species. Large larvae of the fourth species, the caddis Odontocerum albicorne, were less aggregated than small larvae at night, and were the only group with a b‐value less than one. 4.. The third hypothesis was partially supported. The distribution did not change significantly (P > 0·05) for nine species; five burrowers in gravel, moss or mud, two highly mobile predators, one sedentary, case–building, Trichoptera species, and one net–spinning Trichoptera species. Aggregation was reduced significantly (P < 0·001) at night for four species, all case–building Trichoptera larvae. Aggregation increased significantly (P < 0·001) at night, except at low densities, for the remaining eight species, one being a nocturnal predator and the others being herbivorous species; all occurred frequently in night samples of invertebrate drift. Day–night changes in spatial distribution were therefore an essential part of the behavioural dynamics of 12 of the 21 species, and should be investigated in other species, including terrestrial species.


COVID-19 und Krebsdiagnostik: Warnsignal aus den Niederlanden


Droht bei Krebs durch COVID-19 schlechtere Versorgung in Deutschland?


title: Ex situ management of Beira antelope Dorcatragus megalotis at Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation, Qatar

text: Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation (AWWP), Qatar, is the only facility worldwide to keep the Beira antelope Dorcatragus megalotis, a small antelope from East Africa, listed as Vulnerable by The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Physical, behavioural and physiological characteristics of the species are described in detail, based on observations in captivity. At AWWP, the Beira antelope population increased from 2000 until 2006 when it declined dramatically as a result of an epidemic‐like outbreak of a respiratory disease most likely owing to a Mycoplasma infection. Management at AWWP includes a diet based on natural forage, careful group composition, enclosure design adapted to the need of the species and close monitoring. Apart from their important conservation status, Beira antelope are highly attractive animals with a particular shape and coloration, and a docile nature.


The Cheetah's Conservation Controversy


title: Reappraisal on pharmacological and mechanical treatments of heart failure

text: Heart failure (HF) is a highly frequent disorder with considerable morbidity, hospitalization, and mortality; thus, it invariably places pressure on clinical and public health systems in the modern world. There have been notable advances in the definition, diagnosis, and treatment of HF, and newly developed agents and devices have been widely adopted in clinical practice. Here, this review first summarizes the current emerging therapeutic agents, including pharmacotherapy, device-based therapy, and the treatment of some common comorbidities, to improve the prognosis of HF patients. Then, we discuss and point out the commonalities and areas for improvement in current clinical studies of HF. Finally, we highlight the gaps in HF research. We are looking forward to a bright future with reduced morbidity and mortality from HF.


title: Including Spatial Heterogeneity and Animal Dispersal When Evaluating Hunting: a Model Analysis and an Empirical Assessment in an Amazonian Community

text: Abstract: Hunting in tropical forests is typically most intense near human settlements, and this creates gradients of decreasing animal densities toward those settlements. Within the context of this spatial pattern, we evaluated the status of game in the hunting grounds of an indigenous community in eastern Ecuador. We constructed a spatially explicit model of hunter‐prey interactions that mimicked the hunting in the village and included realistic animal‐dispersal rules. We compared predictions from the model with distributions of animal harvest rates and catch per unit effort of 12 game species. Six species were overharvested in part or all of the area, and two other species were probably being overharvested, although high dispersal rates complicated the interpretation. We then compared our method with methods that have been used previously. We argue that because our method provides information about the spatial extent of overharvesting, it could be particularly useful in informing decision makers about where to establish no‐take areas and could therefore aid in improving the sustainability of hunting in tropical forests.


title: Tools and techniques for disease risk assessment in threatened wildlife conservation programmes

text: Disease plays a significant role as a risk factor in wildlife conservation programmes involving animal movements, such as translocation, transportation among zoos or reintroduction. However, the traditional ‘zero‐risk tolerance’ approach to the assessment of disease risk in these programmes is unattainable and unmanageable, often leading to an excessively cautious attitude towards the risks that are involved. It is therefore critically important to develop a comprehensive, unified and broadly applicable set of descriptive and analytical tools that can more realistically and accurately assess disease‐based risks in conservation‐based animal‐movement programmes. The Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, of the IUCN – World Conservation Union, has brought together an international team of wildlife medicine professionals to construct a set of qualitative and quantitative tools to assess disease risk. The tools are flexible, intuitive and span a broad range of complexities. These tools are designed to enable professionals to incorporate not only published, statistically valid data but also to make reasonable decisions under conditions of uncertainty, and to capture valuable information from more basic field or clinical experience. Selected tools from the larger ‘toolkit’ are described here, with examples from actual case studies where available.


Lung cancer management challenges amidst COVID-19 pandemic: hope lives here


title: Do ringing numbers reflect true migratory activity of nocturnal migrants?

text: In autumn 1998, nocturnal bird migration at Falsterbo was recorded over a period of three months by means of a passive infrared device. At the same place a standardised trapping scheme is in operation. This study reveals for the first time a positive correlation between the migratory intensity of birds aloft and the numbers of trapped birds. By relating the migratory patterns of single species with the nocturnal migratory intensities, we show that the species composition aloft can at least partly be deduced from the number of grounded birds. The numbers of trapped pre‐Saharan migrants were related more strongly to the migratory intensity of the preceding night than were the numbers of trans‐Saharan migrants. Assuming that the number of trapped birds varies according to the weather to the same extent as the migratory intensity of birds aloft, we conclude that in shorter range migrants the decision to engage in a migratory flight is influenced more strongly by weather conditions, and that the migratory activity of trans‐Saharan migrants is possibly more intensely controlled by their endogenous migratory urge.


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title: Rethinking sustainability: a review of Liberia’s municipal solid waste management systems, status, and challenges

text: The appalling state of Liberia’s municipal solid waste management system (MSWM) is the motivation for this review and analysis. Solid waste management protocols and system dynamic modeling support policy development as it uses waste prevention to explain the complex waste management systems and suggests methods for effective management. However, creating an effective waste system goes beyond the formulation of policies and legislation; it involves financial and technological proficiency, skilled human capacity, technical, social, resource recycling, educational awareness programs, and active public participation. Because of urbanization, Liberia’s municipal solid waste (MSW) problems have become heightened, thereby impacting the economic, social, and political fabric of society by overburdening infrastructure and social facilities. The impact of urbanization must be addressed because urbanization, amongst several factors, including unsustainable management of MSW, degrades the environment and presents risks to public health. The purpose of this review was to highlight the current waste management activities in Liberia and provide information to the readers about the challenges facing the waste management sector and the challenges impeding the development of a sustainable waste management system. In Liberia, waste management activities are getting worse daily due to shortage of a comprehensive waste management framework, the absence of guidelines regarding the responsibilities of waste generators, and the decision-makers' lack of intent to design and implement a sustainable and integrated management system. Recommendations for collaborative efforts are made by focusing on delivering a waste strategy which concentrates on waste minimization, recycling, resource recovery, and promoting sustainable waste management practices for communities, small businesses, corporations, and government institutions in Liberia and other developing countries.


ASTCT Notes


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title: On the Solvability of Urban Complexity


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title: Ultra-portable low-cost improvised powered air-purifying respirator: feasibility study


Katastrophenschutz


"Der Mensch ist, was er isst"


Schlaganfälle und Enzephalitis bei COVID-19?


Corona: Entschädigung für Praxisschließung


title: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Economics and Finance Theories

text: This chapter provides a high-level introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in economics and finance theories. It describes what AI is and how it is changing the field of finance and economics, particularly some of the key theories embedded in this field. Further, the chapter outlines the 13 chapters that are covered in this book. Following the introductory chapter, the book discusses the Solow Growth Theory, the Ricardian Theory, the Dual-Sector Theory, the Dynamic Inconsistent Theory; the Phillips Curve, the Laffer Curve, the Adverse Selection Theory, the Moral Hazard Theory; the Creative Destruction Theory, the Agency Theory, and the Legitimacy Theory and the Legitimacy Gap. Chapter 10.1007/978-3-030-42962-1_13 is provides the summary and conclusion.


Olympics in the Time of a Pandemic


Is multiple sclerosis a risk factor for infections?


Mental Health Issues Mediate Social Media Use in Rumors: Implication for Media Based Mental Health Literacy


EP News: Case Reports


Call for commentaries on COVID-19


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title: Letter to the Editor on ‘Risk Factors for Unplanned Admission to the Intensive Care Unit After Elective Total Joint Arthroplasty’


title: I Just Can’t Get Enough (of Experts): The Numbers of COVID-19 and the Need for a European Approach to Testing

text: This article offers a reflection on the testing strategies deployed in the generation of epidemiological data in the European Union (EU). I will argue that, while in the early days of the pandemic, Member States proceeded to testing in a rather scattered way, the shortage of resources seems to have acted as a driver of coordination, which is now increasingly being discussed at EU level. I will examine the legal and institutional framework supporting such embryonic coordination efforts and offer a preliminary assessment of their implications for a European approach to epidemiological knowledge-making.


Inusual caso de Hiponatremia aguda grave en paciente con Infección por COVID-19


A neurology department at a tertiary-level hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic()


A commentary on: “Consensus recommendations on balancing educational opportunities and service provision in surgical training: Association of Surgeons in Training Delphi qualitative study”


Guillain-Barré syndrome associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection()


The ethics (mis)used for filling the voids or harm of harm reduction ethics


Covid-19 grave con debut como neumonía bilateral, ictus isquémico e infarto agudo de miocardio


Mandatory Social Distancing Associated With Increased Doubling Time: An Example Using Hyperlocal Data


Asia Pacific


Fatal Guillain-Barre syndrome after infection with SARS-CoV-2()


The Fellowship Experience in Adult Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology – strategies for applicants and fellows to navigate the coronavirus crisis


La radiología en tiempos de distopías y cisnes negros: reflexiones desde el confinamiento COVID-19


COVID-19 and Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine: Is There Ophthalmological Concern?


Annonces de congrès


title: Documento de consenso de la Sociedad Española de Medicina Intensiva, Crítica, y Unidades Coronarias (SEMICYUC), la Sociedad Española de Otorrinolaringología y Cirugía de Cabeza y Cuello (SEORL-CCC) y la Sociedad Española de Anestesiología y Reanimación (SEDAR) sobre la traqueotomía en pacientes con COVID-19(♦)()

text: The current COVID-19 pandemic has rendered up to 15% of patients under mechanical ventilation. Because the subsequent tracheotomy is a frequent procedure, the three societies mostly involved (SEMICYUC, SEDAR and SEORL-CCC) have setup a consensus paper that offers an overview about indications and contraindications of tracheotomy, be it by puncture or open, clarifying its respective advantages and enumerating the ideal conditions under which they should be performed, as well as the necessary steps. Regular and emergency situations are displayed together with the postoperative measures.


title: GAMMA: A Graph and Multi-view Memory Attention Mechanism for Top-N Heterogeneous Recommendation

text: Exploiting heterogeneous information networks (HIN) to top-N recommendation has been shown to alleviate the data sparsity problem present in recommendation systems. This requires careful effort in extracting relevant knowledge from HIN. However, existing models in this setting have the following shortcomings. Mainly, they are not end-to-end, which puts the burden on the system to first learn similarity or commuting matrix offline using some manually selected meta-paths before we train for the top-N recommendation objective. Further, they do not attentively extract user-specific information from HIN, which is essential for personalization. To address these challenges, we propose an end-to-end neural network model – GAMMA (Graph and Multi-view Memory Attention mechanism). We aim to replace the offline meta-path based similarity or commuting matrix computation with a graph attention mechanism. Besides, with different semantics of items in HIN, we propose a multi-view memory attention mechanism to learn more profound user-specific item views. Experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model for top-N recommendation setting.


title: Curiosity-Driven Variational Autoencoder for Deep Q Network

text: In recent years, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has achieved tremendous success in high-dimensional and large-scale space control and sequential decision-making tasks. However, the current model-free DRL methods suffer from low sample efficiency, which is a bottleneck that limits their performance. To alleviate this problem, some researchers used the generative model for modeling the environment. But the generative model may become inaccurate or even collapse if the state has not been sufficiently explored. In this paper, we introduce a model called Curiosity-driven Variational Autoencoder (CVAE), which combines variational autoencoder and curiosity-driven exploration. During the training process, the CVAE model can improve sample efficiency while curiosity-driven exploration can make sufficient exploration in a complex environment. Then, a CVAE-based algorithm is proposed, namely DQN-CVAE, that scales CVAE to higher dimensional environments. Finally, the performance of our algorithm is evaluated through several Atari 2600 games, and the experimental results show that the DQN-CVAE achieves better performance in terms of average reward per episode on these games.


title: Learning Multigraph Node Embeddings Using Guided Lévy Flights

text: Learning efficient representation of graphs has recently been studied extensively for simple networks to facilitate various downstream applications. In this paper, we deal with a more generalized graph structure, called multigraph (multiple edges of different types connecting a pair of nodes) and propose Multigraph2Vec, a random walk based framework for learning multigraph network representation. Multigraph2Vec samples a heterogeneous neighborhood structure for each node by preserving the inter-layer interactions. It employs Lévy flight random walk strategy, which allows the random walker to travel across multiple layers and reach far-off nodes in a single step. The transition probabilities are learned in a supervised fashion as a function of node attributes (metadata based and/or network structure based). We compare Multigraph2Vec with four state-of-the-art baselines after suitably adopting to our setting on four datasets. Multigraph2Vec outperforms others in the task of link prediction, by beating the best baseline with 5.977% higher AUC score; while in the multi-class node classification task, it beats the best baseline with 5.28% higher accuracy. We also deployed Multigraph2Vec for friend recommendation on Hike Messenger.


title: Case-Sensitive Neural Machine Translation

text: Even as an important lexical information for Latin languages, word case is often ignored in machine translation. According to observations, the translation performance drops significantly when we introduce case-sensitive evaluation metrics. In this paper, we introduce two types of case-sensitive neural machine translation (NMT) approaches to alleviate the above problems: i) adding case tokens into the decoding sequence, and ii) adopting case prediction to the conventional NMT. Our proposed approaches incorporate case information to the NMT decoder by jointly learning target word generation and word case prediction. We compare our approaches with multiple kinds of baselines including NMT with naive case-restoration methods and analyze the impacts of various setups on our approaches. Experimental results on three typical translation tasks (Zh-En, En-Fr, En-De) show that our proposed methods lead to the improvements up to 2.5, 1.0 and 0.5 in case-sensitive BLEU scores respectively. Further analyses also illustrate the inherent reasons why our approaches lead to different improvements on different translation tasks.


title: Modeling Users’ Multifaceted Interest Correlation for Social Recommendation

text: Recommender systems suggest to users the items that are potentially of their interests, by mining users’ feedback data on items. Social relations provide an independent source of information about users and can be exploited for improving recommendation performance. Most of existing recommendation methods exploit social influence by refining social relations into a scalar indicator to either directly recommend friends’ visited items to users or constrain that friends’ embeddings are similar. However, a scalar indicator cannot express the multifaceted interest correlations between users, since each user’s interest is distributed across multiple dimensions. To address this issue, we propose a new embedding-based framework, which exploits users’ multifaceted interest correlation for social recommendation. We design a dimension-wise attention mechanism to learn a correlation vector to characterize the interest correlation between a pair of friends, capturing the high variation of users’ interest correlation on multiple dimensions. Moreover, we use friends’ embeddings to smooth a user’s own embedding with the correlation vector as weights, building the elaborate unstructured social influence between users. Experimental results on two real-world datasets demonstrate that modeling users’ multifaceted interest correlations can significantly improve recommendation performance.


title: Relational Metric Learning with Dual Graph Attention Networks for Social Recommendation

text: Existing social recommenders typically incorporate all social relations into user preference modeling, while social connections are not always built on common interests. In addition, they often learn a single vector for each user involved in two domains, which is insufficient to reveal user’s complex interests to both items and friends. To tackle the above issues, in this paper, we consider modeling the user-item interactions and social relations simultaneously and propose a novel metric learning-based model called RML-DGATs. Specifically, relations in two domains are modeled as two types of relation vectors, with which each user can be regarded as being translated to both multiple item-aware and social-aware representations. Then we model the relation vectors by neighborhood interactions with two carefully designed dual GATs to fully encode the neighborhood information. Finally, the two parts are jointly trained under a dual metric learning framework. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms the best baseline by 1.91% to 4.74% on three metrics for top-N recommendation and the performance gains are more significant under the cold-start scenarios.