ethicalabs/Research-Intent-Collab huggingface dataset:
The concept of decentralized finance (DeFi) as a current trend in the field of open decentralized protocols

Subject. This article discusses the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi), an alternative to the traditional financial infrastructure and built on the Ethereum platform. Objectives. The article aims to consider the features and problematic aspects of decentralized finance (services, applications, protocols, smart contracts, token standards), develop a predictive scenario for the development of DeFi in the world, and prove the prospects for the implementation of a decentralized finance infrastructure. Methods. For the study, we used the methods of observation, systematization, data classification, and generalization. Results. The article describes the advantages and potential risks of implementing a decentralized finance infrastructure and focuses on the prospects of DeFi in the context of the development of the global world economy. Conclusions. The article emphasizes the need to promptly solve urgent problems for the practical implementation of DeFi, including ensuring the proper level of operational security.
Hands on Science to communicate innovations in research – engaging the public in coastal wave hazard measurements to inform management activities

Rising sea level is increasing the flood hazard from sea defence overtopping. New coastal schemes therefore need to be cost-effective and future-proofed. WireWall, with its portable, low cost measurement technology, is a system that can collect overtopping velocities and volumes to inform new scheme design and validate flood forecasting systems. Whilst the application of technology is important, it is equally vital that the scientific community actively engage with the public to raise awareness and understanding of coastal defence initiatives. To engage the public in understanding coastal hazard, how it is managed and how new advances in research informs management decisions, a portable demonstration model of the WireWall field rig has been developed. The tool is hands on, eye catching and user-friendly; and showcases new advances in technology to support coastal flood risk management thus educating the coastal community about changing hazard to promote public preparedness. This tool has successfully initiated in situ engagement between the public, coastal practitioners and researchers to develop support for a new scheme being planned at the WireWall study site. The future wellbeing of coastal communities depends on clear communication of new research that is making sense of changing seas. Here a methodology is presented that achieves just that. The communication facilitated through the design approach used to develop this tool, has turned knowledge and technological innovations into accessible information for government, business and the public.
Thermodynamics of Non-Elementary Chemical Reaction Networks

We develop a thermodynamic framework for closed and open chemical networks applicable to non-elementary reactions that do not need to obey mass action kinetics. It only requires the knowledge of the kinetics and of the standard chemical potentials, and makes use of the topological properties of the network (conservation laws and cycles). Our approach is proven to be exact if the network results from a bigger network of elementary reactions where the fast-evolving species have been coarse grained. Our work should be particularly relevant for energetic considerations in biosystems where the characterization of the elementary dynamics is seldomly achieved.
Self-Distilled Self-supervised Representation Learning

WACV 23, 11 pages
Photonic convolutional neural networks using integrated diffractive optics

&lt;div&gt;With recent rapid advances in photonic integrated circuits, it has been demonstrated that programmable photonic chips can be used to implement artificial neural networks. Convolutional neural networks (CNN) are a class of deep learning methods that have been highly successful in applications such as image classification and speech processing. We present an architecture to implement a photonic CNN using the Fourier transform property of integrated star couplers. We show, in computer simulation, high accuracy image classification using the MNIST dataset. We also model component imperfections in photonic CNN and show that the performance degradation can be recovered in a programmable chip. Our proposed architecture provides a large reduction in physical footprint compared to current implementations as it utilizes the natural advantages of optics and hence offers a scalable pathway towards integrated photonic deep learning processors.&lt;/div&gt;
Digital Phenotyping Data to Predict Symptom Improvement and Mental Health App Personalization in College Students: Prospective Validation of a Predictive Model

Background             Mental health apps offer a transformative means to increase access to scalable evidence-based care for college students. Yet low rates of engagement currently preclude the effectiveness of these apps. One promising solution is to make these apps more responsive and personalized through digital phenotyping methods able to predict symptoms and offer tailored interventions.                                   Objective             Following our protocol and using the exact model shared in that paper, our primary aim in this study is to assess the prospective validity of mental health symptom prediction using the mindLAMP app through a replication study. We also explored secondary aims around app intervention personalization and correlations of engagement with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Digital Working Alliance Inventory scale in the context of automating the study.                                   Methods             The study was 28 days in duration and followed the published protocol, with participants collecting digital phenotyping data and being offered optional scheduled and algorithm-recommended app interventions. Study compensation was tied to the completion of weekly surveys and was not otherwise tied to engagement or use of the app.                                   Results             The data from 67 participants were used in this analysis. The area under the curve values for the symptom prediction model ranged from 0.58 for the UCLA Loneliness Scale to 0.71 for the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Engagement with the scheduled app interventions was high, with a study mean of 73%, but few participants engaged with the optional recommended interventions. The perceived utility of the app in the TAM was higher (P=.01) among those completing at least one recommended intervention.                                   Conclusions             Our results suggest how digital phenotyping methods can be used to create generalizable models that may help create more personalized and engaging mental health apps. Automating studies is feasible, and our results suggest targets to increase engagement in future studies.                                   International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)             RR2-10.2196/37954
The human rights to water and sanitation in courts worldwide: a selection of national, regional, and international case law, WaterLex, 2014, ISBN: 978-2-940526-00-0

This publication is the first attempt to compile decisions of judicial and quasi-judicial bodies on the rights to water and sanitation both at the regional and national levels, from different parts of the world. It is timely because strong regulatory and institutional frameworks have become paramount for tackling the widespread inequities in the distribution of access to water and sanitation. The publication is divided into three main sections: the thematic guide, Part 1 focusing on national jurisdictions, and Part 2 focusing on regional jurisdictions. The thematic guide section lists the five human rights principles that are essential to the realisation of the rights to water and sanitation, namely non-discrimination and equality, access to information, participation, accountability, and sustainability. It also lists the normative content of the rights to water and sanitation including availability, physical accessibility, acceptability, affordability, quality, and safety. This thematic guide is the basis for the classification of all the cases that are summarised in the publication. Furthermore, it enables the reader to easily identify other related cases on the same topic. In line with the focus of the publication on both water and sanitation, the availability and acceptability criteria listed in the thematic guide are analysed for water and sanitation, respectively, in separate paragraphs. Part 1 consists of 65 decided cases from 28 national courts in Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. The cases show instances of the recognition of the rights to water and sanitation based on international consensus, constitutional recognition of the rights to water
Kynureninase Promotes Immunosuppression and Predicts Survival in Glioma Patients: In Silico Data Analyses of the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) and of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)

Kynureninase (KYNU) is a kynurenine pathway (KP) enzyme that produces metabolites with immunomodulatory properties. In recent years, overactivation of KP has been associated with poor prognosis of several types of cancer, in particular by promoting the invasion, metastasis, and chemoresistance of cancer cells. However, the role of KYNU in gliomas remains to be explored. In this study, we used the available data from TCGA, CGGA and GTEx projects to analyze KYNU expression in gliomas and healthy tissue, as well as the potential contribution of KYNU in the tumor immune infiltrate. In addition, immune-related genes were screened with KYNU expression. KYNU expression correlated with the increased malignancy of astrocytic tumors. Survival analysis in primary astrocytomas showed that KYNU expression correlated with poor prognosis. Additionally, KYNU expression correlated positively with several genes related to an immunosuppressive microenvironment and with the characteristic immune tumor infiltrate. These findings indicate that KYNU could be a potential therapeutic target for modulating the tumor microenvironment and enhancing an effective antitumor immune response.
Reviewing the Evidence to Inform the Population of Cost-Effectiveness Models within Health Technology Assessments

Health technology assessments (HTAs) typically require the development of a cost-effectiveness model, which necessitates the identification, selection, and use of other types of information beyond clinical effectiveness evidence to populate the model parameters. The reviewing activity associated with model development should be transparent and reproducible but can result in a tension between being both timely and systematic. Little procedural guidance exists in this area. The purpose of this article was to provide guidance, informed by focus groups, on what might constitute a systematic and transparent approach to reviewing information to populate model parameters.A focus group series was held with HTA experts in the United Kingdom including systematic reviewers, information specialists, and health economic modelers to explore these issues. Framework analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data elicited during focus groups.Suggestions included the use of rapid reviewing methods and the need to consider the trade-off between relevance and quality. The need for transparency in the reporting of review methods was emphasized. It was suggested that additional attention should be given to the reporting of parameters deemed to be more important to the model or where the preferred decision regarding the choice of evidence is equivocal.These recommendations form part of a Technical Support Document produced for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence Decision Support Unit in the United Kingdom. It is intended that these recommendations will help to ensure a more systematic, transparent, and reproducible process for the review of model parameters within HTA.
Organizational culture and leadership behaviors: is manager’s psychological health the missing piece?

BackgroundIn a context where organizations struggle to attract and retain highly qualified workers, organizations need to prioritize the psychological health of employees as a retention factor. To do so, they need to provide a healthy work environment. As an integral part of the employee experience, managers are an important factor in employee retention. In past studies, researchers have focused on the importance of leadership in boosting employees’ health without, however, considering factors encouraging such behavior in managers. Recently, some scholars have become interested in managers’ health as a resource allowing them to adopt good leadership behavior. Indeed, these studies reveal interesting links between managers’ emotional state and their behavior as leaders. Other studies, underscore the importance of considering the organizational context to better understand managers’ psychological health that may influence their leadership behaviors. This study proposes to examine the complex process by which organizational culture influences managers’ psychological health, which acts as a resource favoring the adoption of good leadership behaviors that are known to be constructive and have positive effects on employee.MethodsPath analyses with the CALIS procedure SAS software, version 9.4 were conducted on a sample of 522 managers in three healthcare facilities in the province of Quebec, Canada.ResultsThe results revealed that group culture is associated with the two indicators of managers’ psychological health at work. The results also demonstrated that managers’ psychological distress at work is positively related to transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles whereas psychological well-being at work is positively related to transformational and transactional leadership. Concerning indirect associations, there is a significant and positive indirect association between group culture and transformational leadership and there is also a significant and negative association between group culture and laissez-faire leadership. Finally, there is also an indirect association between hierarchical culture and transactional leadership.ConclusionOur study provides a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between organizational culture and leadership styles. More specifically, our findings highlight the benefits of implementing a group organizational culture to enhance psychological well-being, reduce psychological distress symptoms and promote good leadership behaviors.
The anthropology of violence: Context, consequences, conflict resolution, healing, and peace-building in Central and Southern Africa

This study, with a focus on Central and Southern Africa, offers an overview of best practices and theoretical debates in the anthropology of violence, including the ethnography of situations where violence is pervasive and active efforts are made to deal with it. Although the multiple sites of recent violence in this region are unique in their scale, intensity, and cause, the literature review suggests a typical course of events of patterns of violence and trauma, construction of memory, efforts at mediation and healing, or persisting conflict and confronting the aftermath of violence at home or in exile. The essay suggests that political reconciliation, healing, ritualized memory, and restoration of justice often accompany, singly or in combination, a break in the cycle of violence. Ethnography and anthropological analysis offers tools for policy-makers, therapists, and leaders to deal with the consequences of violence.
Testing alternative indicators for biodiversity conservation in old-growth boreal forests: ecology and economics

Abstract   In this study, the performance of biodiversity indicators used in the selection of boreal old-growth forest reserves is assessed. The indicators include beetles, birds, vascular plants, wood-inhabiting fungi, and a specified subgroup of assumed indicator species. Our site selection procedure includes information both on ecological variables and on the economic costs incurred from the ecological survey and the opportunity costs of conservation. Complementarity and scoring procedures in site selection are compared. We show that the use of indicators likely results in a loss of species, and therefore, a complete inventory of biodiversity is necessary if the goal is to maintain all species in the landscape. However, the use of indicators seems to be an economically more efficient practice than to execute a large biodiversity survey for habitat protection in our case study. In general, birds and vascular plants seem better indicators than other taxa. A scoring approach performs better than a complementarity approach for indicator taxa containing a small number of species.
Utilization of Root Cause Failure Analysis in the Investigation of Marine Deck Fitting Failures

ABSTRACTCracking was discovered in the openings of cargo deck tie down fittings on ships under construction. There was a distinct possibility that these cracks could propagate through the fittings and into the strength deck plating, affecting the ships hull integrity. With more than 14,000 fittings installed on each ship, the appearance of approximately 400 cracks at the mid‐ship area of the main and lower decks raised production and operational concerns. This paper will discuss the successful application of a Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) methodology employed by a Corrective Action Team (CAT) established to solve the problem. Through their efforts and the systematic application of RCFA, various failure hypotheses were validated or discounted and consensus was achieved on the appropriate corrective action.
Unequal Land: Towards Full Recognition of Indigenous People’s Religious Rights

Indigenous people face disparate treatment regarding religious free-exercise claims in the United States court system. Specifically, courts misconstrue native religious practices and hold native religious practitioners to a higher standard of proof than practitioners of mainstream religions in their free-exercise claims. This Article analyzes the history of oppression of indigenous people in the United States and the congressional intent to remedy such oppression through legislation. Further, this Article argues that despite Congress’s efforts to remedy the oppression of indigenous peoples, courts still utilize a problematic analysis of indigenous free-exercise claims. To resolve the inconsistent treatment between native and mainstream religious practitioners, this Article argues that courts should do three things when analyzing an indigenous free-exercise claim: (1) presume indigenous peoples suffer subjective harm from the government action at issue; (2) apply the law through an anti-subordination lens; and (3) broadly construe the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Conic-Optimization Based Algorithms for Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

Nonnegative matrix factorization is the following problem: given a nonnegative input matrix $V$ and a factorization rank $K$, compute two nonnegative matrices, $W$ with $K$ columns and $H$ with $K$ rows, such that $WH$ approximates $V$ as well as possible. In this paper, we propose two new approaches for computing high-quality NMF solutions using conic optimization. These approaches rely on the same two steps. First, we reformulate NMF as minimizing a concave function over a product of convex cones--one approach is based on the exponential cone, and the other on the second-order cone. Then, we solve these reformulations iteratively: at each step, we minimize exactly, over the feasible set, a majorization of the objective functions obtained via linearization at the current iterate. Hence these subproblems are convex conic programs and can be solved efficiently using dedicated algorithms. We prove that our approaches reach a stationary point with an accuracy decreasing as $\mathcal{O}(\frac{1}{i})$, where $i$ denotes the iteration number. To the best of our knowledge, our analysis is the first to provide a convergence rate to stationary points for NMF. Furthermore, in the particular cases of rank-one factorizations (that is, $K=1$), we show that one of our formulations can be expressed as a convex optimization problem implying that optimal rank-one approximations can be computed efficiently. Finally, we show on several numerical examples that our approaches are able to frequently compute exact NMFs (that is, with $V = WH$), and compete favorably with the state of the art.
Knowledge and Perception of Pharmacy Interns in Ghana on Antimicrobial Use, Resistance, and Stewardship: A Cross‐Sectional Study

ABSTRACT                                        Background and Aims                     Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health crisis, particularly predominant in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Pharmacists play a crucial role in combating AMR, especially through antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) initiatives. In Ghana, the training of pharmacists includes a mandatory 1‐year internship before licensure, aimed at ensuring that graduates are well‐prepared to deliver high‐quality pharmaceutical care. However, the extent to which this training equips interns to address AMR, especially through AMS, remains unclear. This study aimed to determine the knowledge and perceptions of pharmacy interns in Ghana on antimicrobial use (AMU), AMR, and AMS to identify gaps or deficiencies in their training.                                                           Methods                     A cross‐sectional study was conducted among 195 pharmacy interns who had just sat for the Ghana Pharmacy Professional Qualifying Examination (GPPQE). A questionnaire adapted from previously published studies was used to collect data. Data were analyzed descriptively using Google Sheets. Knowledge scores were categorized using Bloom's cut‐off criteria: a score of ≥ 80% was considered “good,” while &lt; 80% was classified as “moderate to poor.”                                                           Results                     Most interns had received training on AMU (92.3%), AMR (90.3%), and AMS (81.5%). Good knowledge levels were observed for AMU (65.6%) and AMR (58.9%); however, only 43.1% demonstrated good AMS knowledge. Despite 92.3% of interns perceiving the quantity and quality of their knowledge to be good, only 58.0% strongly agreed they had received sufficient training, and 64.6% expressed a desire for further education on AMU, AMR, and AMS, reflecting awareness of training gaps.                                                           Conclusion                     Although most interns received training, there were critical knowledge gaps present, particularly in AMS. While interns held positive perceptions of their stewardship roles, a gap exists between their self‐assessed knowledge and objective knowledge performance, especially regarding AMS. Reviewing internship training objectives and harmonizing AMS education across training institutions is recommended to ensure that pharmacy graduates are well prepared for their stewardship roles in practice.
Rough differential equations driven by signals in Besov spaces

Rough differential equations are solved for signals in general Besov spaces unifying in particular the known results in Hölder and p-variation topology. To this end the paracontrolled distribution approach, which has been introduced by Gubinelli, Imkeller and Perkowski ["Paracontrolled distribution and singular PDEs", Forum of Mathematics, Pi (2015)] to analyze singular stochastic PDEs, is extended from Hölder to Besov spaces. As an application we solve stochastic differential equations driven by random functions in Besov spaces and Gaussian processes in a pathwise sense.