Beyond Myopia: Learning from Positive and Unlabeled Data through Holistic Predictive Trends

Learning binary classifiers from positive and unlabeled data (PUL) is vital in many real-world applications, especially when verifying negative examples is difficult. Despite the impressive empirical performance of recent PUL methods, challenges like accumulated errors and increased estimation bias persist due to the absence of negative labels. In this paper, we unveil an intriguing yet long-overlooked observation in PUL: \textit{resampling the positive data in each training iteration to ensure a balanced distribution between positive and unlabeled examples results in strong early-stage performance. Furthermore, predictive trends for positive and negative classes display distinctly different patterns.} Specifically, the scores (output probability) of unlabeled negative examples consistently decrease, while those of unlabeled positive examples show largely chaotic trends. Instead of focusing on classification within individual time frames, we innovatively adopt a holistic approach, interpreting the scores of each example as a temporal point process (TPP). This reformulates the core problem of PUL as recognizing trends in these scores. We then propose a novel TPP-inspired measure for trend detection and prove its asymptotic unbiasedness in predicting changes. Notably, our method accomplishes PUL without requiring additional parameter tuning or prior assumptions, offering an alternative perspective for tackling this problem. Extensive experiments verify the superiority of our method, particularly in a highly imbalanced real-world setting, where it achieves improvements of up to $11.3\%$ in key metrics. The code is available at \href{https://github.com/wxr99/HolisticPU}{https://github.com/wxr99/HolisticPU}.Comment: 25 page

Evaluation of high mobility group box 1 protein as a presurgical diagnostic marker reflecting the severity of acute appendicitis.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.OBJECTIVES: To validate the role of high mobility group box-1(HMGB1) in diagnosis of acute appendicitis (AA) with different pathological severity. METHODS: According to the pathologically diagnosis, 150 patients underwent appendectomies between Jan. 2007 and Dec, 2010 were divided into acute simple, acute suppurative and acute gangrenous appendicitis as group 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Each patient group contains 50 sex and age matched cases to make comparison with 50 healthy volunteers. The mRNA and protein expression levels of serum HMGB1 were determined by real-time quantitative PCR and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Serum High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels were determined by rate nephelometric immunoassay. RESULTS: In comparison with health volunteers, relative HMGB1 mRNA levels in group 1, 2 and 3 were significantly increased 3.05 ± 0.51,8.33 ± 0.75 and 13.74 ± 1.09 folds, reflecting a tendency of augmented severity. In accordance, serum protein levels of HMGB1 were 10.97 ± 1.64, 14.42 ± 1.56 and 18.08 ± 2.41 ng/ml in 3 patient groups, which are significantly higher than that of healthy volunteers' 5.47 ± 0.73 ng/ml. hs-CRP levels were 12.85 ± 3.41, 21.04 ± 1.98 and 31.07 ± 5.46 ng/ml in 3 patients groups compared with 2.06 ± 0.77 ng/ml in controls. The concentrations of HMGB1 and hs-CRP were both positively correlated with disease severity. CONCLUSION: Serum HMGB1 constitutes as a valuable marker in diagnosis of AA. Positively correlated with hs-CRP level, mRNA and protein expression of HMGB1 to a certain extent reflected the severity of AA

Adaptation of Rice to the Nordic Climate Yields Potential for Rice Cultivation at Most Northerly Site and the Organic Production of Low-Arsenic and High-Protein Rice

There is an urgent demand for low-arsenic rice in the global market, particularly for consumption by small children. Soils in Uppsala, Sweden, contain low concentrations of arsenic (As). We hypothesize that if certain japonica paddy rice varieties can adapt to the cold climate and long day length in Uppsala and produce normal grains, such a variety could be used for organic production of low-arsenic rice for safe rice consumption. A japonica paddy rice variety, "Heijing 5," can be cultivated in Uppsala, Sweden, after several years' adaptation, provided that the rice plants are kept under a simple plastic cover when the temperature is below 10 degrees C. Uppsala-adapted "Heijing 5" has a low concentration of 0.1 mg per kg and high protein content of 12.6% per dry weight in brown rice grain, meaning that it thus complies with all dietary requirements determined by the EU and other countries for small children. The high protein content is particularly good for small children in terms of nutrition. Theoretically, Uppsala-adapted "Heijing 5" can produce a yield of around 5100 kg per ha, and it has a potential for organic production. In addition, we speculate that cultivation of paddy rice can remove nitrogen and phosphorus from Swedish river water and reduce nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea and associated algae blooms

Polarization-Engineering in III-V Nitride Heterostructures: New Opportunities For Device Design

The role of spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization in III-V nitride heterostructure devices is discussed. Problems as well as opportunities in incorporating polarization in abrupt and graded heterojunctions composed of binary, ternary, and quaternary nitrides are outlined.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Long Non-Coding RNAs As Prognostic Markers In Human Breast Cancer

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been recently shown to play an important role in gene regulation and normal cellular functions, and disease processes. However, despite the overwhelming number of lncRNAs identified to date, little is known about their role in cancer for vast majority of them. The present study aims to determine whether lncRNAs can serve as prognostic markers in human breast cancer. We interrogated the breast invasive carcinoma dataset of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) at the cBioPortal consisting of ~ 1,000 cases. Among 2,730 lncRNAs analyzed, 577 lncRNAs had alterations ranging from 1% to 32% frequency, which include mutations, alterations of copy number and RNA expression. We found that deregulation of 11 lncRNAs, primarily due to copy number alteration, is associated with poor overall survival. At RNA expression level, upregulation of 4 lncRNAs (LINC00657, LINC00346, LINC00654 and HCG11) was associated with poor overall survival. A third signature consists of 9 lncRNAs (LINC00705, LINC00310, LINC00704, LINC00574, FAM74A3, UMODL1-AS1, ARRDC1-AS1, HAR1A, and LINC00323) and their upregulation can predict recurrence. Finally, we selected LINC00657 to determine their role in breast cancer, and found that LINC00657 knockout significantly suppresses tumor cell growth and proliferation, suggesting that it plays an oncogenic role. Together, these results highlight the clinical significance of lncRNAs, and thus, these lncRNAs may serve as prognostic markers for breast cancer

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Details for the selection of physicochemical properties from AAIndex database. (DOC 31 kb