Improving Items and Contexts Understanding with Descriptive Graph for Conversational Recommendation

State-of-the-art methods on conversational recommender systems (CRS) leverage external knowledge to enhance both items' and contextual words' representations to achieve high quality recommendations and responses generation. However, the representations of the items and words are usually modeled in two separated semantic spaces, which leads to misalignment issue between them. Consequently, this will cause the CRS to only achieve a sub-optimal ranking performance, especially when there is a lack of sufficient information from the user's input. To address limitations of previous works, we propose a new CRS framework KLEVER, which jointly models items and their associated contextual words in the same semantic space. Particularly, we construct an item descriptive graph from the rich items' textual features, such as item description and categories. Based on the constructed descriptive graph, KLEVER jointly learns the embeddings of the words and items, towards enhancing both recommender and dialog generation modules. Extensive experiments on benchmarking CRS dataset demonstrate that KLEVER achieves superior performance, especially when the information from the users' responses is lacking.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 9 table

Panic Purchasing: Food Hoarding in a City under Lockdown during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This research aimed to investigate the determinants of panic purchasing to hoard food in Ho Chi Minh City during the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Pragmatism and the deduction approach were used for the research. During the lockdown period in Ho Chi Minh City, the purposive sampling technique was the first method used to reach the population that needed to be measured. Then, simple sampling was the second technique to collect data in the city in July and August 2021. Data were collected from 584 participants—higher than the required minimum sample size—who fulfilled the essential criteria to be included in the sample’s population. Multi-quantitative methods, including descriptive statistics, reliability tests for items, exploratory factor analysis, and linear regression analysis, were used to analyze the data obtained. The main findings are that perceived scarcity, susceptibility, severity, cues to action, and self-efficacy impacted panic purchasing to hoard foods. The results of this study are compared to the literature review in order to discuss panic buying behaviour, and recommendations are offered to policymakers and researchers in the future

Spatiotemporal evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants during large nationwide outbreak of COVID-19, Vietnam, 2021

We analyzed 1,303 SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequences from Vietnam, and found the Alpha and Delta variants were responsible for a large nationwide outbreak of COVID-19 in 2021. The Delta variant was confined to the AY.57 lineage and caused >1.7 million infections and >32,000 deaths. Viral transmission was strongly affected by nonpharmaceutical interventions

Safety and efficacy of fluoxetine on functional outcome after acute stroke (AFFINITY): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background Trials of fluoxetine for recovery after stroke report conflicting results. The Assessment oF FluoxetINe In sTroke recoverY (AFFINITY) trial aimed to show if daily oral fluoxetine for 6 months after stroke improves functional outcome in an ethnically diverse population. Methods AFFINITY was a randomised, parallel-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial done in 43 hospital stroke units in Australia (n=29), New Zealand (four), and Vietnam (ten). Eligible patients were adults (aged ≥18 years) with a clinical diagnosis of acute stroke in the previous 2–15 days, brain imaging consistent with ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke, and a persisting neurological deficit that produced a modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of 1 or more. Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 via a web-based system using a minimisation algorithm to once daily, oral fluoxetine 20 mg capsules or matching placebo for 6 months. Patients, carers, investigators, and outcome assessors were masked to the treatment allocation. The primary outcome was functional status, measured by the mRS, at 6 months. The primary analysis was an ordinal logistic regression of the mRS at 6 months, adjusted for minimisation variables. Primary and safety analyses were done according to the patient's treatment allocation. The trial is registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12611000774921. Findings Between Jan 11, 2013, and June 30, 2019, 1280 patients were recruited in Australia (n=532), New Zealand (n=42), and Vietnam (n=706), of whom 642 were randomly assigned to fluoxetine and 638 were randomly assigned to placebo. Mean duration of trial treatment was 167 days (SD 48·1). At 6 months, mRS data were available in 624 (97%) patients in the fluoxetine group and 632 (99%) in the placebo group. The distribution of mRS categories was similar in the fluoxetine and placebo groups (adjusted common odds ratio 0·94, 95% CI 0·76–1·15; p=0·53). Compared with patients in the placebo group, patients in the fluoxetine group had more falls (20 [3%] vs seven [1%]; p=0·018), bone fractures (19 [3%] vs six [1%]; p=0·014), and epileptic seizures (ten [2%] vs two [<1%]; p=0·038) at 6 months. Interpretation Oral fluoxetine 20 mg daily for 6 months after acute stroke did not improve functional outcome and increased the risk of falls, bone fractures, and epileptic seizures. These results do not support the use of fluoxetine to improve functional outcome after stroke

Existence of solutions to the Riemann problem for a model of two-phase flows

We study the existence of solutions of the Riemann problem for a model of two-phase flows. The model has the form of a nonconservative hyperbolic system of balance laws. Based on a phase decomposition approach, we obtain all the wave curves. By developing an analytic method, we can establish a system of nonlinear algebraic equations for each solution of the Riemann problem. The system is under-determined and can be parameterized by the volume fraction in one phase. Therefore, an argument relying on the Implicit-Function Theorem leads us to the existence of solutions of the Riemann problem for the model for sufficiently large initial data. Furthermore, the structure of the Riemann solutions obtained by this method can also be obtained

Compound K: A systematic review of its anticancer properties and probable mechanisms

Panax ginseng is a common natural product, which is well-known to have a wide range of pharmacological activities in cancer. Its metabolite, compound K (CK), has been reported to have anticancer activity. We aimed to systematically review the literature for evidence of anticancer effects of CK. We conducted a systematic search in eight databases. We included all in vitro and in vivo studies investigating the anticancer effects of CK with no restrictions. Quality assessment was applied by ToxRTool. Fifty-four articles were included in our study. The purity of CK in our included studies was at least 95%. The in vitro studies reported that CK had a potential anticancer activity on several cell lines including human lung cancer cell lines (A549, PC-9), nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell line (Hk-1), liver cancer cell line (BEL 7402), and pediatric acute myeloid leukemia cell lines (Kasumi-1, MV4-11). The in vivo studies reported a significant decrease in tumor volume in mice treated with CK. CK is a potential supplementary treatment in cancer chemotherapies. The safety and further clinical trials of CK should be explored for future drug development

Rescue intracranial stenting in acute ischemic stroke (study).

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In cases of acute ischemic stroke that are caused by intracranial large vessel occlusion, rescue intracranial stenting has recently become a treatment option to achieve recanalization in patients when mechanical thrombectomy fails. However, there have been few studies to date that support this beneficial treatment. Our goal is to analyze whether the use of rescue intracranial stenting would improve non-poor prognosis in patients 3 months posttreatment. METHODS: This was a retrospective analysis of a prospective cohort of patients with acute ischemic stroke who were treated with rescue stenting at our hospital. Inclusion criteria for the study consisted of evidence of intracranial large vessel occlusion, absence of intracranial hemorrhage, and severe stenosis or reocclusion after mechanical thrombectomy. Tandem occlusions, failure to follow up after discharge, and a severe combined illness concomitant with acute ischemic stroke were excluded. The primary outcome was the non-poor outcome rate at 3 months and postprocedural symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage. RESULTS: The posttreatment outcomes of 85 eligible patients who received rescue intracranial stenting between August 2019 and May 2021 are reported. In total, 82 of these patients (96.5%) had successful recanalization and 4 (4.7%) experienced symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage. In total, 47 (55.3%) patients had non-poor and 35 (41.2%) good outcomes at 3 months after treatment with rescue intracranial stenting. The use of dual antiplatelet therapy was associated with new infarcts (relative risk = 0.1; 95% confidence interval 0.01-0.7) and symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (relative risk = 0.1; 95% confidence interval 0.01-0.9). CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that despite the occurrence of postprocedural symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage in a low proportion of cases, rescue intracranial stenting could be an important alternative treatment after mechanical thrombectomy failure