Turning the Tables: Biased, Imbalanced, Dynamic Tabular Datasets for ML Evaluation

Evaluating new techniques on realistic datasets plays a crucial role in the development of ML research and its broader adoption by practitioners. In recent years, there has been a significant increase of publicly available unstructured data resources for computer vision and NLP tasks. However, tabular data -- which is prevalent in many high-stakes domains -- has been lagging behind. To bridge this gap, we present Bank Account Fraud (BAF), the first publicly available privacy-preserving, large-scale, realistic suite of tabular datasets. The suite was generated by applying state-of-the-art tabular data generation techniques on an anonymized,real-world bank account opening fraud detection dataset. This setting carries a set of challenges that are commonplace in real-world applications, including temporal dynamics and significant class imbalance. Additionally, to allow practitioners to stress test both performance and fairness of ML methods, each dataset variant of BAF contains specific types of data bias. With this resource, we aim to provide the research community with a more realistic, complete, and robust test bed to evaluate novel and existing methods.Comment: Accepted at NeurIPS 2022. https://openreview.net/forum?id=UrAYT2QwOX

Climate Impacts of the Common Era on Aquatic Systems in NW Spain: preliminary results

Poster.-- Clivar 2023, Towards an integrated view of climate, 24-26 January, MadridEcological resistance and resilience of freshwater ecosystems is intimately linked to climate variability. To the extent of our knowledge, this issue has never been addressed using a long-term paleoecological perspective in Galicia (NW Spain). Project IMPACOM (Climate Impacts of the Common Era on Aquatic Systems in NW Spain, Spanish Ministry of Science and innovation, PID2019-107424RB-I00) is intended to study the impacts of changes in the precipitation regime and storm conditions, among other climate forcing factors, on coastal lakes and their enclosing barriers, as well as on bogs and mountain lakes in the region during the Common Era (CE, last 2,000 yr). To identify and precisely date the major ecological transitions of the CE we use a multidisciplinary approach which includes sedimentological facies analysis, inorganic bulk geochemical analyses (from X-ray fluorescence analysis, core scanning, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, estimation of humification indexes, elemental and isotopic analyses of organic matter, biogenic silica), biological proxies (diatoms, pollen, plant macrofossils, testate amoeba and chironomids), as well as a set of geochronological techniques (AMS radiocarbon dating, concentrations of fallout 137Cs, 210Pb, 214Pb and 241Am, OSL dating)The study of the lacustrine sedimentary record of the coastal Lake Doniños, as well as of the sand barrier which encloses this lake and that of the wetland of Pantín, both in A Coruña province, shows a history of breaching and overwashing linked to the intensification of storms and enhanced precipitation over the last 4,500-4,000 yr. For the case of the last 2,000 yr, catastrophic emptying of Lake Doniños took place during the Dark Ages (DA, 350-750 CE) and the Little Ice Age (LIA, 1500-1930 CE). The transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) to the LIA involved in this lake a gradual 200 yr long transformation from an isolated lake to an intermittent tidal lagoon until the LIA breaching episode. Lake Ocelo, an oligotrophic mountain lake located in the Trevinca Massif (Ourense province) shows a net eutrophication trend since the termination of the Subatlantic period. This trend was however interrupted by oligotrophication events in the warm/cold transitions of the Roman Warm Period to the DA, lasting 500 years, and the MCA to LIA, which lasted 600 years. Extended ice cover during the LIA, as suggested by the preliminary diatom data, involved stronger denitrification processes associated to longer periods of anoxia, indicated by the nitrogen isotopic record. Anticipation of the oligotrophication events to the known chronologies for the onset of the DA and the LIA suggests that these two phases occurred approximately 100 and 200 years earlier than expected, according to other mountain lake record of the W Iberian Peninsula. Our preliminary data also show significant discrepancies in the timing of the ecological impacts of Recent Climate Changes (RCCs) taking place in the last 2,000 yr in coastal and mountain areas over a short longitudinal gradient which needs further explorationN

Estabilidade dos medicamentos manipulados

Actualmente assiste-se a uma cada vez maior solicitação dos Medicamentos Manipulados, principalmente com o objectivo de encontrar soluções terapêuticas não oferecidas pela Indústria Farmacêutica. A Manipulação Magistral de Medicamentos deve obedecer a vários parâmetros que são determinados pela legislação e por diferentes Farmacopeias. Esses parâmetros visam o garante da qualidade, segurança e eficácia destes medicamentos sendo a sua estabilidade um factor chave. Este artigo visa apresentar os principais factores que condicionam a estabilidade dos medicamentos manipulados e condicionam a atribuição de um prazo de validade aos mesmos. Nowadays there is an increase in the request for compounded medicines or extemporaneous formulations, mainly for situations that are not covered by the Pharmaceutical Industry. Compounded medicines must follow quality parameters that are required by law and are included in different pharmacopoeias. This review aims to present the main factors that condition compounded formulations stability and hence determine expiry dates

Variants in the new E1ʹ cryptic exon of the VHL gene associated with congenital erythrocytosis—Description of three cases

Abstract Congenital erythrocytosis (CE) represents a rare and heterogeneous group of hereditary disorders. The molecular basis of VHL gene mutations related to CE. Recently, Lenglet et al. reported a discovery of a novel cryptic exon in the VHL gene. Mutations in the first intronic region resulting in the creation of a cryptic exon termed E1ʹ were found in seven families with CE and one family with VHL disease. We report three patients with prolonged CE with the aetiology being clarified several years later by sequencing of intronic region 1 of the VHL gene. This work addresses the first cases reported at the clinical level of VHL‐associated CE due to the E1ʹ cryptic exon

Catastrophic vs. Gradual Ecological Change in a Coastal Back-barrier Perched Lake as a Function of Climate-forced Barrier Breaching in the Last 2,700 yr

AGUFall Meeting 2019 in San Francisco, 9 – 13 December 2019Ecological resistance and resilience of freshwater coastal back-barrier perched lakes are intimately linked to the stability of the sand-barrier enclosing them, which controls the inflow of seawater. We address the long-term ecological changes (2,700 cal yr BP to present) in one of these systems in NW Spain (Doniños, A Coruña) from a multi-proxy paleoecological reconstruction based on biological, physical, and chemical analyses of its lacustrine sedimentary record, as well as on GPR surveys of the sand barrier. Although human intervention cannot be completely disregarded, AMS 14C and OSL datings show that ecological changes were synchronous with the main climatic periods of the studied interval. The ancient freshwater lake was catastrophically emptied due to barrier breaching coinciding with the increase of storms within the Dark Ages (350-750 CE) and the Little Ice Age (LIA, 1500-1930 CE), the latter characterized by an active retrograding sand barrier. Erosion induced by storms and increased rainfall generated two hiatuses which left no record of the ecological recovery of the system. By contrast, the transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the LIA (1100-1500 CE) shows a gradual ecological transformation from an isolated lake towards a transitional shallow choked lagoon and, finally, an intermittent tidal lagoon, which lasted approx. 200 yr. Although determining whether an observed ecosystem change represents a regime shift in the framework of the Alternative Stable States Hypothesis is difficult in highly variable systems, this gradual change is here not ascribed as a sudden non-linear ecological regime shift. A 210Pb age-model for the upper sediments shows that the current freshwater lake was established c. 1945 CE, after the dune fields stabilized in the region associated to the known decrease in storm and wind intensities. Changes in the main North Atlantic atmospheric patterns in the last decades are considered the ultimate agents of the complete isolation of the lake from the sea. This work stresses the need of a detailed knowledge of the stratigraphy of the sand-barrier and the lacustrine infilling for reliable reconstructions of the long-term ecological trajectories of coastal perched lakes.This research was funded by projects RapidNAO (CGL2013-40608-R) and PaleoModes (CGL2016-75281-C2