CQARank: Jointly Model Topics and Expertise in Community Question Answering

Community Question Answering (CQA) websites, where people share expertise on open platforms, have become large repositories of valuable knowledge. To bring the best value out of these knowledge repositories, it is critically important for CQA services to know how to find the right experts, retrieve archived similar questions and recommend best answers to new questions. To tackle this cluster of closely related problems in a principled approach, we proposed Topic Expertise Model (TEM), a novel probabilistic generative model with GMM hybrid, to jointly model topics and expertise by integrating textual content model and link structure analysis. Based on TEM results, we proposed CQARank to measure user interests and expertise score under different topics. Leveraging the question answering history based on long-term community reviews and voting, our method could find experts with both similar topical preference and high topical expertise. Experiments carried out on Stack Overflow data, the largest CQA focused on computer programming, show that our method achieves significant improvement over existing methods on multiple metrics. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).EI

A retrospective study for prognostic significance of type II diabetes mellitus and hemoglobin A1c levels in non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with pembrolizumab

Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is common and recognized as a risk factor for developing non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) while the prognostic evaluation is still controversial. As immunotherapy is widely used in clinical practice, its efficacy and survival should be investigated in patients with DM. Methods: We retrospectively recruited 266 locally advanced and metastatic NSCLC patients who received pembrolizumab alone or in combination with chemotherapy. Patients\u27 clinicopathological data, including age, history of DM, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), genetic tumor profiling, and survival data were collected. Associations between clinical characteristics and survival were evaluated by univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: In this cohort, 15.04 % (40/266) of the patients had a history of DM. Fifty-nine (22.2 %) patients had a HbA1c level ≥ 6.5 %. A total of 169 (63.5 %) patients received 1st-line therapy, and 97 (36.5 %) received 2nd- or subsequent-line therapy. Patients with high ( ≥ 6.5 %) HbA1c and lower ( \u3c 35 g/L) albumin levels at baseline had worse survivals, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutants significantly associated with worse outcomes at normal HbA1c ( \u3c 6.5%) levels (all P \u3c 0.05). Among the 1st-line therapy patients, a higher HbA1c level ( ≥ 6.5 %) at baseline indicated a worse overall survival (OS) (2-year survival rate: 31.25 % vs. 27.03 %, P = 0.045), tumor protein p53 (TP53) alternations and high programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression ( ≥ 50 %) were significantly associated with better outcomes (P \u3c 0.05). For 2nd- or subsequent-line patients, EGFR mutants and non-squamous carcinomas (non-SCs) indicated worse survivals, and the normal peripheral blood markers of the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), C-reactive protein (CRP), albumin levels were favorable prognostic factors for survivals. In non-SCs, Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog (KRAS) mutations, high PD-L1 expression, and normal alkaline phosphatase (ALP) levels favored better progression-free survival (PFS), while EGFR mutants indicated poor PFS (P \u3c 0.05). Conclusions: Among patients treated with 1st-line immunotherapy, a higher HbA1c level ( ≥ 6.5 %) indicated dismal OS, while history of DM, baseline blood glucose levels, and glucose changes during the treatment process were not significantly associated with any of the outcomes

Artemisinin Ameliorates Osteoarthritis by Inhibiting the Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Pathway

Background/Aims: Current drug therapies for osteoarthritis (OA) are not practical because of the cytotoxicity and severe side-effects associated with most of them. Artemisinin (ART), an antimalarial agent, is well known for its safety and selectivity to kill injured cells. Based on its anti-inflammatory activity and role in the inhibition of OA-associated Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, which is crucial in the pathogenesis of OA, we hypothesized that ART might have an effect on OA. Methods: The chondro-protective and antiarthritic effects of ART on interleukin-1-beta (IL-1β)-induced and OA patient-derived chondrocytes were investigated in vitro using cell viability assay, glycosaminoglycan secretion, immunofluorescence, quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and western blotting. We also used OA model rats constructed by anterior cruciate ligament transection and medial meniscus resection (ACLT+MMx) in the joints to investigate the effects of ART on OA by gross observation, morphological staining, immunohistochemistry, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: ART exhibited potent anti-inflammatory effects by inhibiting the expression of proinflammatory chemokines and cytokines, including interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and matrix metallopeptidase-13. It also showed favorable chondro-protective effect as evidenced by enhanced cell proliferation and viability, increased glycosaminoglycan deposition, prevention of chondrocyte apoptosis, and degeneration of cartilage. Further, ART inhibited OA progression and cartilage degradation via the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, suggesting that it might serve as a Wnt/β-catenin antagonist to reduce inflammation and prevent cartilage degradation. Conclusion: In conclusion, ART alleviates IL-1β-mediated inflammatory response and OA progression by regulating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Thereby, it might be developed as a potential therapeutic agent for OA

Allelic imbalances of chromosomes 8p and 18q and their roles in distant relapse of early stage, node-negative breast cancer

INTRODUCTION: Identification of breast cancer patients at risk for postoperative distant relapse is an important clinical issue. Existing pathological markers can predict disease recurrence only to a certain extent, and there is a need for more accurate predictors. METHODS: Using 'counting alleles', a novel experimental method, we determined allelic status of chromosomes 8p and 18q in a case-control study with 65 early stage, node negative, invasive ductal carcinomas (IDCs). The association between allelic imbalance (AI) of both chromosomal markers and distant relapses was examined. RESULTS: Eighty percent of tumors contained 8pAI and sixty-eight percent of tumors contained 18qAI. However, none of the tumor samples retained both chromosome 8p and 18q alleles. More importantly, tumors with 8pAI but not 18qAI were more likely to have distant relapse compared to tumors with 18qAI but not 8pAI. CONCLUSION: Our finding suggests that differential allelic loss of chromosomes 8p and 18q may represent subtypes of early stage IDC with different tumor progression behaviors

An Exploration of the Time Element in the Linguistic Landscape and Reconstructing Culture: The Case of Langtou Village in China

The tourism industry has penetrated traditional Chinese villages, where the linguistic landscape reflects a dialogue between historical heritage and contemporary culture, thereby redefining the transformation of China's rural cultural ecology. The researchers gathered 475 images of the linguistic landscape through fieldwork in Langtou Village and conducted a qualitative investigation within the context of Chinese cultural history and village history. Based on Huebner's (2008) speaking model, researchers investigated the potential influence of time elements in the linguistic landscape on the cultural reconstruction of the village. We conclude that the linguistic landscape of Langtou Village encompasses seven types of time elements, which essentially observe content time, creation time, and feature time. The commonalities or differences among these elements give rise to time trajectories that influence the cultural reconstruction of Langtou Village. One is the cultural reconstruction of cherishing memory, which perpetuates historical information. Another is the cultural reconstruction of combining moments, which amalgamates contemporary culture and poses the risk of inauthenticity in historical villages. The study suggests that the distribution of time elements in linguistic landscapes exhibits hierarchy in real settings, which is related to the spatial regularity induced by the village's historical information. We believe that adopting a time-element-oriented perspective can deliver new recommendations for the linguistic landscape planning of traditional Chinese villages. This research inspires readers to comprehend the essence of the relationship between rural linguistic landscapes and cultural ecology, specifically: what is the smallest unit of interaction between historical and contemporary culture in the context of reconstruction

Spatial and Temporal Variations of Incision Rate of the Middle Yellow River and Its Tributaries

We present a model to reconstruct spatiotemporal variation of uplift along the Jinshan Gorge of the Yellow River of Northern China based on quantitative analysis of the river channel profiles. We focus on the tributaries along the gorge that drain from the Loess Plateau on the Ordos crustal block. Base level fall on a tributary is genetically related to its trunk channel incision through the incision rate of the confluence point. We leverage this relationship to reconstruct a scaled incision history at each confluence point from an inversion analysis of tributary networks governed by the stream power law. In this way, we create an artificial geomorphic marker, that we refer to as a “pseudo-terrace.” These metrics provide information on the incision history of the Yellow River. Our result shows a recent acceleration of river incision along the southern Jinshan Gorge, including spatial variations indicative of tectonic activity. The northern gorge exhibits more uniform and steady incision rates. This pattern can be attributed to on-going lithospheric mantle upwelling beneath the southern Ordos Block.ISSN:0148-0227ISSN:2169-9003ISSN:2169-901

Topic Expertise Model

Yang, L., Qiu, M., Gottipati, S., Zhu, F., Jiang, J., Sun, H., & Chen, Z. (2013). Topic Expertise Model. Available at Github - https://github.com/minghui/TopicExpertiseModel</p