HireVAE: An Online and Adaptive Factor Model Based on Hierarchical and Regime-Switch VAE

Factor model is a fundamental investment tool in quantitative investment, which can be empowered by deep learning to become more flexible and efficient in practical complicated investing situations. However, it is still an open question to build a factor model that can conduct stock prediction in an online and adaptive setting, where the model can adapt itself to match the current market regime identified based on only point-in-time market information. To tackle this problem, we propose the first deep learning based online and adaptive factor model, HireVAE, at the core of which is a hierarchical latent space that embeds the underlying relationship between the market situation and stock-wise latent factors, so that HireVAE can effectively estimate useful latent factors given only historical market information and subsequently predict accurate stock returns. Across four commonly used real stock market benchmarks, the proposed HireVAE demonstrate superior performance in terms of active returns over previous methods, verifying the potential of such online and adaptive factor model.Comment: Accepted to IJCAI 202

Semiparametric Estimation of Task-Based Dynamic Functional Connectivity on the Population Level

Dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) estimates time-dependent associations between pairs of brain region time series as typically acquired during functional MRI. dFC changes are most commonly quantified by pairwise correlation coefficients between the time series within a sliding window. Here, we applied a recently developed bootstrap-based technique (Kudela et al., 2017) to robustly estimate subject-level dFC and its confidence intervals in a task-based fMRI study (24 subjects who tasted their most frequently consumed beer and Gatorade as an appetitive control). We then combined information across subjects and scans utilizing semiparametric mixed models to obtain a group-level dFC estimate for each pair of brain regions, flavor, and the difference between flavors. The proposed approach relies on the estimated group-level dFC accounting for complex correlation structures of the fMRI data, multiple repeated observations per subject, experimental design, and subject-specific variability. It also provides condition-specific dFC and confidence intervals for the whole brain at the group level. As a summary dFC metric, we used the proportion of time when the estimated associations were either significantly positive or negative. For both flavors, our fully-data driven approach yielded regional associations that reflected known, biologically meaningful brain organization as shown in prior work, as well as closely resembled resting state networks (RSNs). Specifically, beer flavor-potentiated associations were detected between several reward-related regions, including the right ventral striatum (VST), lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral anterior insular cortex (vAIC). The enhancement of right VST-vAIC association by a taste of beer independently validated the main activation-based finding (Oberlin et al., 2016). Most notably, our novel dFC methodology uncovered numerous associations undetected by the traditional static FC analysis. The data-driven, novel dFC methodology presented here can be used for a wide range of task-based fMRI designs to estimate the dFC at multiple levels-group-, individual-, and task-specific, utilizing a combination of well-established statistical methods

DPPMask: Masked Image Modeling with Determinantal Point Processes

Masked Image Modeling (MIM) has achieved impressive representative performance with the aim of reconstructing randomly masked images. Despite the empirical success, most previous works have neglected the important fact that it is unreasonable to force the model to reconstruct something beyond recovery, such as those masked objects. In this work, we show that uniformly random masking widely used in previous works unavoidably loses some key objects and changes original semantic information, resulting in a misalignment problem and hurting the representative learning eventually. To address this issue, we augment MIM with a new masking strategy namely the DPPMask by substituting the random process with Determinantal Point Process (DPPs) to reduce the semantic change of the image after masking. Our method is simple yet effective and requires no extra learnable parameters when implemented within various frameworks. In particular, we evaluate our method on two representative MIM frameworks, MAE and iBOT. We show that DPPMask surpassed random sampling under both lower and higher masking ratios, indicating that DPPMask makes the reconstruction task more reasonable. We further test our method on the background challenge and multi-class classification tasks, showing that our method is more robust at various tasks

Efficacy and safety of pharmacotherapy for refractory or unexplained chronic cough: a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Background: Refractory chronic cough (RCC) has a significant impact on patient's health-related quality of life and represents a challenge in clinical management. However, the optimal treatment for RCC remains controversial. This study aimed to investigate and compare the efficacy and safety of the current pharmacological therapeutic options for RCC. Methods: A systematic review was performed by searching PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Ovid databases from January 1, 2008 to March 1, 2023. All randomised control trials (RCTs) reporting outcomes of efficacy or/and safety were included in the Bayesian network meta-analysis. Here, we compared the effects on Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), and objective cough frequency of patients with RCC. Besides, we also compared the incidence of adverse events (AEs) for analysis of safety. PROSPERO registration: CRD42022345940. Findings: 19 eligible RCTs included 3326 patients and 7 medication categories: P2X3 antagonist, GABA modulator, Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) modulator, NK-1 agonist, opioid analgesic, macrolide, and sodium cromoglicate. Compared with placebo, mean difference (MD) of LCQ and 24 h cough frequency for P2X3 antagonist relief were 1.637 (95% CI: 0.887–2.387) and −11.042 (P = 0.035). Compared with placebo, effect sizes (MD for LCQ and cough severity VAS) for GABA modulator were 1.347 (P = 0.003) and −7.843 (P = 0.003). In the network meta-analysis, gefapixant is the most effective treatment for patients with RCC (The Surface Under the Cumulative Ranking Curves (SUCRA) is 0.711 in LCQ, 0.983 in 24 h cough frequency, and 0.786 in cough severity VAS). Lesogaberan had better efficacy than placebo (SUCRA: 0.632 vs. 0.472) in 24 h cough frequency. Eliapixant and lesogaberan had better efficacy than placebo in cough severity VAS. However, TRP modulator had worse efficacy than placebo. In the meta-analysis of AEs, the present study found P2X3 antagonist had a significant correlation to AEs (RR: 1.129, 95% CI: 1.012–1.259), especially taste-related AEs (RR: 6.216, P < 0.05). Interpretation: In this network meta-analysis, P2X3 antagonist showing advantages in terms of efficacy is currently the most promising medication for treatment of RCC. GABA modulator also showed potential efficacy for RCC but with AEs of the central system. Nevertheless, the role of TRP modulator needed to be revisited. Further research is needed to determine the potential beneficiary population for optimizing the pharmacological management of chronic cough. Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 81870079), Guangdong Science and Technology Project ( 2021A050520012), Incubation Program of National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars ( GMU2020-207)

Longitudinal white-matter abnormalities in sports-related concussion: A diffusion MRI study

Objective To study longitudinal recovery trajectories of white matter after sports-related concussion (SRC) by performing diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) on collegiate athletes who sustained SRC. Methods Collegiate athletes (n = 219, 82 concussed athletes, 68 contact-sport controls, and 69 non–contact-sport controls) were included from the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium. The participants completed clinical assessments and DTI at 4 time points: 24 to 48 hours after injury, asymptomatic state, 7 days after return-to-play, and 6 months after injury. Tract-based spatial statistics was used to investigate group differences in DTI metrics and to identify white-matter areas with persistent abnormalities. Generalized linear mixed models were used to study longitudinal changes and associations between outcome measures and DTI metrics. Cox proportional hazards model was used to study effects of white-matter abnormalities on recovery time. Results In the white matter of concussed athletes, DTI-derived mean diffusivity was significantly higher than in the controls at 24 to 48 hours after injury and beyond the point when the concussed athletes became asymptomatic. While the extent of affected white matter decreased over time, part of the corpus callosum had persistent group differences across all the time points. Furthermore, greater elevation of mean diffusivity at acute concussion was associated with worse clinical outcome measures (i.e., Brief Symptom Inventory scores and symptom severity scores) and prolonged recovery time. No significant differences in DTI metrics were observed between the contact-sport and non–contact-sport controls. Conclusions Changes in white matter were evident after SRC at 6 months after injury but were not observed in contact-sport exposure. Furthermore, the persistent white-matter abnormalities were associated with clinical outcomes and delayed recovery tim

Exploring Singapore legal information : a domain-analytic approach to law librarianship

This dissertation aims to perform a sketch of the legal information domain in Singapore by employing the domain-analytic approach which was first proposed by Hjørland (1993). The domains of various disciplines, topics and communities have since been studied in the domain analysis literature of library and information science (LIS), but law remains one of the areas with limited contributions. By exploring this topic, the paper hopes to contribute to both (1) the general pool of domain analysis literature; as well as (2) to generate discourse as part of the process of building up the landscape of Singapore law librarianship, which is still presently in its nascent stages. Law librarianship, like health/medical librarianship, offers much potential for studies in domain analysis in LIS due to it being fairly established with its own set of unique domain-specific information norms and practices. This study therefore examines different key aspects of the legal information domain but with a specific focus on Singapore, a common law legal system. The dissertation explores the following aspects of the Singapore legal information domain: (1) its conceptual boundaries; (2) its historical underpinning; (3) the information sources and services; (4) the producers and users of legal information; and (5) prevailing legal information organization practices. In each of these sections, unique elements of the Singapore legal information domain are articulated through the domain-analytic approach. Through this exercise, the value of domain analysis as a systematic approach to mapping out a knowledge domain is demonstrated. This study finds that domain analysis exposes certain assumptions about the Singapore legal information domain as well as gaps in the current literature, on top of its role of providing structured roadmap for Singapore legal information professionals to learn about the domain. The insight generated from the dissertation may be relevant to law librarians, knowledge management personnel, information professionals, the legal fraternity and LIS academics. As an exploratory piece, it is hoped that it will spur further research in the terrain of Singapore law librarianship.Master of Science (Information Studies

Gender as the Forefront of International Law - An Indispensable Key

Bachelor'sBachelor of Laws (Honours) (LL.B.

A Heterogeneous Architecture for the Vision Processing Unit with a Hybrid Deep Neural Network Accelerator

The vision chip is widely used to acquire and process images. It connects the image sensor directly with the vision processing unit (VPU) to execute the vision tasks. Modern vision tasks mainly consist of image signal processing (ISP) algorithms and deep neural networks (DNNs). However, the traditional VPUs are unsuitable for the DNNs, and the DNN processing units (DNPUs) cannot process the ISP algorithms. Meanwhile, only the CNNs and the CNN-RNN frameworks are used in the vision tasks, and few DNPUs are specifically designed for this. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous architecture for the VPU with a hybrid accelerator for the DNNs. It can process the ISP, CNNs, and hybrid DNN subtasks on one unit. Furthermore, we present a sharing scheme to multiplex the hardware resources for different subtasks. We also adopt a pipelined workflow for the vision tasks to fully use the different processing modules and achieve a high processing speed. We implement the proposed VPU on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and several vision tasks are tested on it. The experiment results show that our design can process the vision tasks efficiently with an average performance of 22.6 giga operations per second/W (GOPS/W)

The next stop campaign

This report presents The Next Stop, a social campaign to help emerging adults navigate the quarter-life crisis and seek clarity about life after graduation, organised by four final-year students from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. Targeted at tertiary students aged 18 to 25, The Next Stop campaign aims to provide tailored resources for young people to navigate life after graduation and emerge from the quarter-life phase to become stronger and happier adults. By sharing stories about the quarter-life and featuring useful resources for young adults, The Next Stop campaign engaged tertiary students across both online and offline platforms, concluding with a forumstyle chat event that laid the groundwork for future expansion of the campaign. This report summarises the primary and secondary research that guided the campaign strategy and key messages. It outlines the journey from conception to execution of the campaign, and concludes with analysis and evaluation of the campaign’s effectiveness based on impact and output objectives. Evaluation includes pre- and post-campaign surveys, metrics from online and on-ground promotion, and thorough analysis of all media coverage. This report also highlights efforts to further develop and sustain the campaign’s efforts. Appendices supplement the main text with press clippings, collateral design and detailed survey results.Bachelor of Communication Studie

<i>SERPINB2</i>, an Early Responsive Gene to Epigallocatechin Gallate, Inhibits Migration and Promotes Apoptosis in Esophageal Cancer Cells

Esophageal cancer is a lethal disease that frequently occurs in developing countries, the incidence of which could be declined by drinking EGCG-enriched drinks or food. SERPINB2, whose complex functions and regulations are not yet fully understood, are induced by multiple inflammatory molecules and anti-tumor agents. Here, we identify 2444 EGCG-regulated genes in esophageal cancer cells, including SERPINB2. EGCG treatment recruits NF-κB at the promoter and enhancers of SERPINB2 and activates gene transcription, which is repressed by NF-κB knockdown or inhibition. Loss of SERPINB2 leads to a faster migration rate and less expression of Caspase-3 in cancer cells. Our study demonstrates that SERPINB2 is a new tumor-suppressor gene involved in cell movement and apoptosis and could be a therapeutic target for esophageal cancer