A Systematic Evaluation of Transfer Learning and Pseudo-labeling with BERT-based Ranking Models

Due to high annotation costs making the best use of existing human-created training data is an important research direction. We, therefore, carry out a systematic evaluation of transferability of BERT-based neural ranking models across five English datasets. Previous studies focused primarily on zero-shot and few-shot transfer from a large dataset to a dataset with a small number of queries. In contrast, each of our collections has a substantial number of queries, which enables a full-shot evaluation mode and improves reliability of our results. Furthermore, since source datasets licences often prohibit commercial use, we compare transfer learning to training on pseudo-labels generated by a BM25 scorer. We find that training on pseudo-labels - -possibly with subsequent fine-tuning using a modest number of annotated queries - -can produce a competitive or better model compared to transfer learning. Yet, it is necessary to improve the stability and/or effectiveness of the few-shot training, which, sometimes, can degrade performance of a pretrained model. © 2021 ACM.Pavel Braslavski thanks the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (“Ural Mathematical Center” project)

Prospects for development of initiative budgeting in mobilization economy

In modern Russia, the initiative budgeting mechanism has been developing systematically since 2015. The practice has been launched in 51 out of 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. This phenomenon is an urgent topic for research, in connection with its priority for the state as one of the important directions for the openness of the budget system development and degree of citizens’ satisfaction with the results of the budget policy improvement. The purpose of this study is to analyze the possibilities of the initiative budgeting practice development in the mobilization economy, which, apparently, for a certain time will become the main model of economic development in Russia. Such general scientific methods of research as comparison, analysis, statistics, and induction were used in the article. The study concludes that the initiative budgeting should be developed in the current state of the Russian economy as the social and managerial positive effects exceed the possible costs of the suspension of the practice

SberQuAD – Russian Reading Comprehension Dataset: Description and Analysis

The paper presents SberQuAD – a large Russian reading comprehension (RC) dataset created similarly to English SQuAD. SberQuAD contains about 50K question-paragraph-answer triples and is seven times larger compared to the next competitor. We provide its description, thorough analysis, and baseline experimental results. We scrutinized various aspects of the dataset that can have impact on the task performance: question/paragraph similarity, misspellings in questions, answer structure, and question types. We applied five popular RC models to SberQuAD and analyzed their performance. We believe our work makes an important contribution to research in multilingual question answering. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.We thank Peter Romov, Vladimir Suvorov, and Ekaterina Arte-mova (Chernyak) for providing us with details about SberQuAD preparation. We also thank Natasha Murashkina for initial data processing. PB acknowledges support by Ural Mathematical Center under agreement No. 075-02-2020-1537/1 with the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation

BMI1 regulates PRC1 architecture and activity through homo- and hetero-oligomerization.

BMI1 is a core component of the polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) and emerging data support a role of BMI1 in cancer. The central domain of BMI1 is involved in protein-protein interactions and is essential for its oncogenic activity. Here, we present the structure of BMI1 bound to the polyhomeotic protein PHC2 illustrating that the central domain of BMI1 adopts an ubiquitin-like (UBL) fold and binds PHC2 in a beta-hairpin conformation. Unexpectedly, we find that the UBL domain is involved in homo-oligomerization of BMI1. We demonstrate that both the interaction of BMI1 with polyhomeotic proteins and homo-oligomerization via UBL domain are necessary for H2A ubiquitination activity of PRC1 and for clonogenic potential of U2OS cells. Here, we also emphasize need for joint application of NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography to determine the overall structure of the BMI1-PHC2 complex

Pruning Algorithms for Low-Dimensional Non-metric k-NN Search: A Case Study

We focus on low-dimensional non-metric search, where tree-based approaches permit efficient and accurate retrieval while having short indexing time. These methods rely on space partitioning and require a pruning rule to avoid visiting unpromising parts. We consider two known data-driven approaches to extend these rules to non-metric spaces: TriGen and a piece-wise linear approximation of the pruning rule. We propose and evaluate two adaptations of TriGen to non-symmetric similarities (TriGen does not support non-symmetric distances). We also evaluate a hybrid of TriGen and the piece-wise linear approximation pruning. We find that this hybrid approach is often more effective than either of the pruning rules. We make our software publicly available

Accurate and Fast Retrieval for Complex Non-metric Data via Neighborhood Graphs

We demonstrate that a graph-based search algorithm-relying on the construction of an approximate neighborhood graph-can directly work with challenging non-metric and/or non-symmetric distances without resorting to metric-space mapping and/or distance symmetrization, which, in turn, lead to substantial performance degradation. Although the straightforward metrization and symmetrization is usually ineffective, we find that constructing an index using a modified, e.g., symmetrized, distance can improve performance. This observation paves a way to a new line of research of designing index-specific graph-construction distance functions

Improving outpatient care in chronic heart failure

Despite advances in pharma and high-technology medicine, the rate of burdensome hospital admissions and mortality in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) remains high. Over half of all admission-entailing decompensations have been repeatedly shown to emerge from non-compliance with outpatient prescriptions. Poor adherence to medication and non-medication treatment can only be broken by improving the patient’s awareness of the disease and his closer monitoring by healthcare professionals. The power of clinical and laboratory illness monitoring in line with the recommended quality criteria of medical aid in heart failure (HF) is strongly limited today by time resources available in outpatient and midwifery clinics. Meanwhile, an international and certain domestic experience has been built up to run CHF outpatient centres with involvement of specially-trained nursing and senior medical staff. Analytic evidence on such centres suggests a reduction in mortality and hospitalisation rate among the visiting patients. To combat existing drawbacks of CHF outpatient care, the National Medical Research Center of Cardiology in alliance with the Specialist Society of Heart Failure have developed the nurses’ guidelines for CHF rooms and are launching a medical staff training programme to manage CHF rooms, registry and data analysis. Furthermore, a procedure has been developed for patient routing to regional CHF outpatient cabinets that is being actively deployed in the Tyumen Region

THE STUDY OF ANAMNESTIC FACTORS AND THEIR ROLE IN ESTIMATION OF SHORT-TERM (IN-HOSPITAL) PROGNOSIS IN PATIENTS UNDERWENT BRAIN STROKE OR TRANSIENT ISCHEMIC ATTACK, BY THE DATA FROM LIS-2 REGISTRY

Aim. To assess the role of anamnestic factors in estimation of the shortest-term (in-hospital) prognosis in patients after stroke. Material and methods. We included all patients during the period 01.01.2009 to 31.12.2011 (n=960), who were diagnosed the stroke ot TIA inMHILyubertsyDistrictHospital№2.Results. Into the registry LIS-2 included 960 patients. During hospitalization 207 patients died, in-hospital mortality was 21,6%. Mortality increased with the age, and the age became an independent death risk factor in hospital (p=0,037). Hemoorhagic stroke increased the risk of death 6,95 times, and consciousness disorders — 2-5 times (depending on the level of disorder), CHF signs— by 3,14 times, and AF— 1,86 times. These values were evaluated as independent anamnestic risk factors of the in-hospital death.Conclusion. The data from LIS-2 registry demonstrates analogy with the data from other stroke registries in RF. In-hospital mortality in LIS-2 was 2-3 times higher comparing to the registries of other countries. Factors influenced in-hospital mortality were age, type of the stroke, level of consciousness at admission, CHF and cardiac rhythm disorders as AF

НОЗОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ СТРУКТУРА СМЕРТНОСТИ ОТ БОЛЕЗНЕЙ СИСТЕМЫ КРОВООБРАЩЕНИЯ в 2006 и 2013 годах

The article provides the results of the assessment of mortality parameters from circulatory system disease (CSD) in Russia in the period from 2006 to 2013. The comparative analysis of the nosological structure of causes of death from CSD was performed. Standardized mortality ratio from CSD decreased by 29,1 % in 2013 compared to 2006. Mortality rates caused by CSD prevail in total mortality rates, in particular in the >75 years age group, accounting for 70 % of all deaths. The vast number of deaths was caused by coronary artery disease, i. e. the cases that were not related to acute coronary events. Mortality rates after myocardial infarction (MI) have declined in all age groups < 80 years. Due to the increase in mortality rates after MI in the age groups > 80 years, there was no significant shift in mortality rates after MI in the total population. Recent amendments to the nosological coding of causes of death make difficult to perform the comparative assessment of mortality rates in a number of CSD. However, there was a significant number of deaths from SCD, which clinical interpretation is complicated by the current classification coding, thus, raising problems in the planning and organization of medical and social care, aimed at reducing mortality from SCD.В статье дана оценка показателей смертности от болезней системы кровообращения (БСК) в России в динамике с 2006 по 2013 г., проведен сравнительный анализ нозологической структуры причин смерти по данному классу заболеваний. Стандартизованный показатель смертности от БСК в 2013 г. снизился по сравнению с 2006 г. на 29,1 %. Доля смертей от БСК в структуре общей смертности высока, особенно в возрастных группах старше 75 лет, составляя около 70 % смертей от всех причин. Подавляющее число смертей от ишемической болезни сердца – это случаи, не связанные с острыми коронарными событиями. Смертность от инфаркта миокарда (ИМ) сократилась во всех возрастных группах моложе 80 лет, но, учитывая рост смертности от ИМ в возрастных группах старше 80 лет, существенной динамики показателей смертности от ИМ в популяции в целом, не выявлено. Сравнительная оценка показателей смертности по ряду заболеваний класса БСК затруднена в связи с внесением изменений в краткую номенклатуру причин смерти за текущий период. В структуре БСК как в 2006 г., так и в 2013 г. отмечается значительное число случаев смерти, текущая классификация которых вызывает проблемы с клинической интерпретацией, а следовательно, проблемы с планированием и организацией медико-социальной помощи, направленной на снижение смертности от БСК

Global Differences in Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction The PARAGON-HF Trial

Background: Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a global public health problem with important regional differences. We investigated these differences in the PARAGON-HF trial (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor Neprilysin Inhibitor With Angiotensin Receptor Blocker Global Outcomes in HFpEF), the largest and most inclusive global HFpEF trial. Methods: We studied differences in clinical characteristics, outcomes, and treatment effects of sacubitril/valsartan in 4796 patients with HFpEF from the PARAGON-HF trial, grouped according to geographic region. Results: Regional differences in patient characteristics and comorbidities were observed: patients from Western Europe were oldest (mean 75 +/- 7 years) with the highest prevalence of atrial fibrillation/flutter (36%); Central/Eastern European patients were youngest (mean 71 +/- 8 years) with the highest prevalence of coronary artery disease (50%); North American patients had the highest prevalence of obesity (65%) and diabetes (49%); Latin American patients were younger (73 +/- 9 years) and had a high prevalence of obesity (53%); and Asia-Pacific patients had a high prevalence of diabetes (44%), despite a low prevalence of obesity (26%). Rates of the primary composite end point of total hospitalizations for HF and death from cardiovascular causes were lower in patients from Central Europe (9 per 100 patient-years) and highest in patients from North America (28 per 100 patient-years), which was primarily driven by a greater number of total hospitalizations for HF. The effect of treatment with sacubitril-valsartan was not modified by region (interaction P>0.05). Conclusions: Among patients with HFpEF recruited worldwide in PARAGON-HF, there were important regional differences in clinical characteristics and outcomes, which may have implications for the design of future clinical trials. REGISTRATION: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT01920711