Empirical evaluation of different feature representations for social circles detection

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19390-8_4Social circles detection is a special case of community detection in social network that is currently attracting a growing interest in the research community. We propose in this paper an empirical evaluation of the multi-assignment clustering method using different feature representation models. We define different vectorial representations from both structural egonet information and user profile features. We study and compare the performance on the available labelled Facebook data from the Kaggle competition on learning social circles in networks. We compare our results with several different baselines.This work was developed in the framework of the W911NF-14-1-0254 research project Social Copying Community Detection (SOCOCODE), fundedby the US Army Research Office (ARO).Alonso, J.; Paredes Palacios, R.; Rosso, P. (2015). Empirical evaluation of different feature representations for social circles detection. En Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis: 7th Iberian Conference, IbPRIA 2015, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, June 17-19, 2015, Proceedings. Springer International Publishing. 31-38. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19390-8_4S3138Buhmann, J., Kühnel, H.: Vector quantization with complexity costs. IEEE Trans. Inf. Theor. 39(4), 1133–1145 (1993)Dey, K., Bandyopadhyay, S.: An empirical investigation of like-mindedness of topically related social communities on microblogging platforms. In: International Conference on Natural Languages (2013)Fortunato, S.: Community detection in graphs. Phys. Rep. 486(3), 75–174 (2010)Frank, M., Streich, A.P., Basin, D., Buhmann, J.M.: Multi-assignment clustering for boolean data. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 13(1), 459–489 (2012)Kaggle: Learning social circles in networks. http://www.kaggle.com/c/learning-social-circlesMcAuley, J., Leskovec, J.: Learning to discover social circles in ego networks. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 25, 539–547 (2012)McAuley, J., Leskovec, J.: Discovering social circles in ego networks. ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data (TKDD) 8(1), 4 (2014)Palla, G., Dernyi, I., Farkas, I., Vicsek, T.: Uncovering the overlapping community structure of complex networks in nature and society. Nature 435(7043), 814–818 (2005)Pathak, N., DeLong, C., Banerjee, A., Erickson, K.: Social topic models for community extraction. In: The 2nd SNA-KDD Workshop (2008)Porter, M.A., Onnela, J.P., Mucha, P.J.: Communities in networks. Not. Amer. Math. Soc. 56(9), 1082–1097 (2009)Rose, K., Gurewitz, E., Fox, G.C.: Vector quantization by deterministic annealing. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 38(4), 1249–1257 (1992)Sachan, M., Contractor, D., Faruquie, T.A., Subramaniam, L.V.: Using content and interactions for discovering communities in social networks. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 331–340 (2012)Streich, A.P., Frank, M., Basin, D., Buhmann, J.M.: Multi-assignment clustering for Boolean data. In: Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 969–976 (2009)Vaidya, J., Atluri, V., Guo, Q.: The role mining problem: finding a minimal descriptive set of roles. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, pp. 175–184 (2007)Zhou, D., Councill, I., Zha, H., Giles, C.L.: Discovering temporal communities from social network documents. In: Seventh IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, PP. 745–750 (2007

Rescaling pain intensity measures for meta-analyses of analgesic medicines for low back pain appears justified: an empirical examination from randomised trials

Objective: Meta-analyses of analgesic medicines for low back pain often rescale measures of pain intensity to use mean difference (MD) instead of standardised mean difference for pooled estimates. Although this improves clinical interpretability, it is not clear whether this method is justified. Our study evaluated the justification for this method. Methods: We identified randomised clinical trials of analgesic medicines for adults with low back pain that used two scales with different ranges to measure the same construct of pain intensity. We transformed all data to a 0–100 scale, then compared between-group estimates across pairs of scales with different ranges. Results: Twelve trials were included. Overall, differences in means between pain intensity measures that were rescaled to a common 0–100 scale appeared to be small and randomly distributed. For one study that measured pain intensity on a 0–100 scale and a 0–10 scale; when rescaled to 0–100, the difference in MD between the scales was 0.8 points out of 100. For three studies that measured pain intensity on a 0–10 scale and 0–3 scale; when rescaled to 0–100, the average difference in MD between the scales was 0.2 points out of 100 (range 5.5 points lower to 2.7 points higher). For two studies that measured pain intensity on a 0–100 scale and a 0–3 scale; when rescaled to 0–100, the average difference in MD between the scales was 0.7 points out of 100 (range 6.2 points lower to 12.1 points higher). Finally, for six studies that measured pain intensity on a 0–100 scale and a 0–4 scale; when rescaled to 0–100, the average difference in MD between the scales was 0.7 points (range 5.4 points lower to 8.3 points higher). Conclusion: Rescaling pain intensity measures may be justified in meta-analyses of analgesic medicines for low back pain. Systematic reviewers may consider this method to improve clinical interpretability and enable more data to be included. Study registration/data availability: Open Science Framework (osf.io/8rq7f)

Effectiveness of Cognitive Functional Therapy for Reducing Pain and Disability in Chronic Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

• OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate whether cognitive functional therapy (CFT) is an effective treatment for adults with chronic low back pain (LBP). • DESIGN: Intervention systematic review with meta-analysis. • LITERATURE SEARCH: We searched 4 electronic databases (CENTRAL, CINAHL, MEDLINE, and Embase) and 2 clinical trial registers (ClinicalTrials. gov and the EU Clinical Trials Register) from inception up to March 2022. U STUDY SELECTION CRITERIA: We included randomized controlled trials evaluating CFT for adults with LBP. • DATA SYNTHESIS: The primary outcomes were pain intensity and disability. Secondary outcomes were psychological status, patient satisfaction, global improvement, and adverse events. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 tool. Certainty of evidence was assessed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations (GRADE) approach. Random-effects meta-analysis with the Hartung-Knapp-Sidik-Jonkman adjustment was used to estimate pooled effects. • RESULTS: Fifteen trials were included (9 ongoing and 1 terminated), of which 5 provided data (n = 507; n = 262 CFT, and n = 245 control). There was very low certainty for the effectiveness of CFT compared to manual therapy plus core exercises (2 studies, n = 265) for reducing pain intensity (mean difference: -1.02/10, 95% confidence interval: -14.75, 12.70) and disability (mean difference: -6.95/100, 95% confidence interval: -58.58, 44.68). Narrative synthesis showed mixed results for pain intensity, disability, and secondary outcomes. No adverse events were reported. All studies were judged to be at high risk of bias. • CONCLUSION: Cognitive functional therapy may not be more effective than other common interventions for reducing pain and disability in adults with chronic LBP. The effectiveness of CFT is very uncertain and will remain so until higherquality studies are available

Effects of a single exercise session on pain intensity in adults with chronic pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Chronic pain is prevalent amongst society, making it necessary to find strategies to manage chronic pain. Regular exercise is efficacious; however, pain is a barrier to initiating exercise. A single exercise session is also believed to acutely reduce pain, however, the evidence for this is less robust. Objectives: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to identify the effect of a single exercise session on pain intensity in adults with chronic pain. Methods: We searched eight databases and trial registries to identify randomised controlled trials evaluating the effect of a single exercise session on pain intensity in adults with chronic pain compared to a non-exercise control. Literature screening, data extraction, risk of bias (Cochrane 2.0) and quality assessment (GRADE) were conducted independently and in duplicate. Random-effects meta-analyses were performed using the metafor package in R. Results: We included 17 trials (46 study arms with 664 adults [44% female]). There were no significant differences in pain intensity (mean difference on a 0-10 scale) immediately post-exercise −0.02 (95% CI = −0.06, 0.62; I2 = 77.1%) or up to 45-min post-exercise −0.17 (95% CI = −0.49, 0.16; I2 = 34.2%). All trials were at high risk of bias and the overall confidence in these findings was very low. Conclusion: A single exercise session did not reduce pain intensity up to 1-h post-exercise. Notably, increases in pain were not observed either, suggesting that while pain can be a barrier to initiating exercise, clinicians can educate patients on the unlikelihood of exercise acutely increasing pain intensity

Baseline imbalance and heterogeneity are present in meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials examining the effects of exercise and medicines for blood pressure management

Randomized clinical trials attempt to reduce bias and create similar groups at baseline to infer causal effects. In meta-analyses, baseline imbalance may threaten the validity of the treatment effects. This meta-epidemiological study examined baseline imbalance in comparisons of exercise and antihypertensive medicines. Baseline data for systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and age were extracted from a network meta-analysis of 391 randomized trials comparing exercise types and antihypertensive medicines. Fixed-effect meta-analyses were used to determine the presence of baseline imbalance and/or inconsistency. Meta-regression analyses were conducted on sample size, the risk of bias for allocation concealment, and whether data for all randomized participants were presented at baseline. In one exercise comparison, the resistance group was 0.3 years younger than the control group (95% confidence interval 0.6 to 0.1). Substantial inconsistency was observed in other exercise comparisons. Less data were available for medicines, but there were no occurrences of baseline imbalance and only a few instances of inconsistency. Several moderator analyses identified significant associations. We identified baseline imbalance as well as substantial inconsistency in exercise comparisons. Researchers should consider conducting meta-analyses of key prognostic variables at baseline to ensure balance across trials