Step by Step to Fairness: Attributing Societal Bias in Task-oriented Dialogue Systems

Recent works have shown considerable improvements in task-oriented dialogue (TOD) systems by utilizing pretrained large language models (LLMs) in an end-to-end manner. However, the biased behavior of each component in a TOD system and the error propagation issue in the end-to-end framework can lead to seriously biased TOD responses. Existing works of fairness only focus on the total bias of a system. In this paper, we propose a diagnosis method to attribute bias to each component of a TOD system. With the proposed attribution method, we can gain a deeper understanding of the sources of bias. Additionally, researchers can mitigate biased model behavior at a more granular level. We conduct experiments to attribute the TOD system's bias toward three demographic axes: gender, age, and race. Experimental results show that the bias of a TOD system usually comes from the response generation model

Prehemodialysis arteriovenous access creation is associated with better cardiovascular outcomes in patients receiving hemodialysis: a population-based cohort study

Background Cardiovascular (CV) disease contributes to nearly half of the mortalities in patients with end-stage renal disease. Patients who received prehemodialysis arteriovenous access (pre-HD AVA) creation had divergent CV outcomes. Methods We conducted a population-based cohort study by recruiting incident patients receiving HD from 2001 to 2012 from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. Patients’ characteristics, comorbidities, and medicines were analyzed. The primary outcome of interest was major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs), defined as hospitalization due to acute myocardial infarction, stroke, or congestive heart failure (CHF) occurring within the first year of HD. Secondary outcomes included MACE-related mortality and all-cause mortality in the same follow-up period. Results The patients in the pre-HD AVA group were younger, had a lower burden of underlying diseases, were more likely to use erythropoiesis-stimulating agents but less likely to use renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system blockers. The patients with pre-HD AVA creation had a marginally lower rate of MACEs but a significant 35% lower rate of CHF hospitalization than those without creation (adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 0.65, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.48–0.88]). In addition, the pre-HD AVA group exhibited an insignificantly lower rate of MACE-related mortality but a significantly 52% lower rate of all-cause mortality than the non-pre-HD AVA group (adjusted HR 0.48, 95% CI [0.39–0.59]). Sensitivity analyses obtained consistent results. Conclusions Pre-HD AVA creation is associated with a lower rate of CHF hospitalization and overall death in the first year of dialysis

withdrawn 2017 hrs ehra ecas aphrs solaece expert consensus statement on catheter and surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation

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Incidence of intoxication events and patient outcomes in Taiwan: A nationwide population-based observational study.

BackgroundIntoxicated patients were frequently managed in the emergency departments (ED) with few studies at national level. The study aimed to reveal the incidence, outcomes of intoxications and trend in Taiwan.MethodsAdults admitted to an ED due to an intoxication event between 2006 and 2013 were identified using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. The rate of intoxication and severe intoxication events, mortality rate, hospital length of stay (LOS), and daily medical costs of these patients were analyzed. Changes over time were analyzed using Joinpoint models. Multivariable generalized regressions with GEE were used to assess the effect of sex, age, and presence of prior psychiatric illness.ResultsA total of 20,371 ED admissions due to intoxication events were identified during the study period, and the incidence decreased with annual percentage change of 4.7% from 2006 to 2013. The mortality rate, hospital LOS, and daily medical costs were not decreased over time. Males and geriatric patients had more severe intoxication events, greater mortality rates, and greater daily medical costs. Patients with psychiatric illnesses had higher mortality rates and a longer hospital LOS, but lower daily medical expenses.ConclusionFrom 2006 to 2013, there was a decline in the incidence of ED admission for intoxication events in Taiwan. Males, geriatric patients, and those with psychiatric illnesses had greater risks for severe intoxication and mortality

Facile preparation of a phosphinated bisphenol and its low water-absorptionepoxy resins for halogen-free copper clad laminates

This study focuses on developing advanced epoxy resins with characteristic of low water absorption forhalogen-free copper clad laminates (CCL). To achieve this goal, we prepared a bisphenol (1) with twophosphinate pendants via the nucleophilic addition of 9, 10-dihydro-9-oxa-10-phosphaphenanthrene10-oxide (DOPO) with the 1,4-phenylene diamine-based benzoxazines (P-pd). A series of advancedepoxy resins (2) were prepared based on the advancement reaction of (1) and diglycidyl ether ofbisphenol A (DGEBA). After curing of (2), the properties of the resulting thermosets such as glass transitiontemperature, coefficient of thermal expansion, thermal decomposition temperature, waterabsorption, and flame retardancy were evaluated. The structureeproperty relationship was also discussed.Experimental data show that the resulting epoxy thermosets display moderate-to-high Tg, goodflame retardancy, high modulus, and very low water absorption

Laparoscopic myomectomy instead of hysteroscopic myomectomy for large submucous fibroids

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of laparoscopy in treating large submucous fibroids with deeply intramural invasion. Study design: Twenty-eight women with a main submucous fibroid >4 cm and with >50% intramural extension were enrolled in this study. Laparoscopic myomectomy was performed instead of hysteroscopic surgery. Results: Median fibroid diameter and weight were 5.0 cm [interquartile range (IQR) 4.6–6.0 cm] and 50.0 g (IQR 36.3–77.5 g), respectively. Median operating time was 60 minutes (IQR 50.0–73.8 minutes) and blood loss was 50 mL (IQR 50–100 mL). Median postoperative hospital stay was 2 days (IQR 2–3 days) and no patient developed complications. Seven women had coexistence of intramural and/or subserosal fibroids (median number of fibroids removed was 1, IQR 1–2). Conclusion: When the diagnosis of submucous fibroid >4 cm with >50% intramural extension is made, laparoscopic myomectomy can be performed instead of hysteroscopic surgery for the sake of safety and removal of nonsubmucous type fibroids concomitantly

Eye Movement Assessment in High and Low Social Anxiety Individuals: AnEye-Tracker Study

Previous studies have suggested that, socially anxious individuals tend to avoid eye contact while looking toward faces.The study designed an emotional faces task consisted of human and comic face stimuli with 6 different emotions (happy,angry, sad, scared, stunned, confused), and recorded the eye movements to examine the hypotheses above. The resultsrevealed that high social anxiety (HSA), medium social anxiety (MSA) and low social anxiety (LSA) individuals have nosignificant difference on total fixation duration of the eyes, nose, and mouth among 6 different emotions. However, whilefocusing on the angry expression, LSA have significantly higher total fixation duration, visit count and area normalizedscore on the nose. It shows that LSA tend to focus on the nose intentionally when a person shows an angry face. Further-more, HSA show lower proportion of eyes to eyes, nose and mouth fixation duration than MSA in happy, sad and stunfaces

Novel models and ensemble techniques to discriminate favorite items from unrated ones for personalized music recommendation

Abstract The Track 2 problem in KDD-Cup 2011 (music recommendation) is to discriminate between music tracks highly rated by a given user from those which are overall highly rated, but not rated by the given user. The training dataset consists of not only user rating history, but also the taxonomic information of track, artist, album, and genre. This paper describes the solution of the National Taiwan University team which ranked first place in the competition. We exploited a diverse of models (neighborhood models, latent models, Bayesian Personalized Ranking models, and random-walk models) with local blending and global ensemble to achieve 97.45% in accuracy on the testing dataset