Structuring Wikipedia Articles with Section Recommendations

Sections are the building blocks of Wikipedia articles. They enhance readability and can be used as a structured entry point for creating and expanding articles. Structuring a new or already existing Wikipedia article with sections is a hard task for humans, especially for newcomers or less experienced editors, as it requires significant knowledge about how a well-written article looks for each possible topic. Inspired by this need, the present paper defines the problem of section recommendation for Wikipedia articles and proposes several approaches for tackling it. Our systems can help editors by recommending what sections to add to already existing or newly created Wikipedia articles. Our basic paradigm is to generate recommendations by sourcing sections from articles that are similar to the input article. We explore several ways of defining similarity for this purpose (based on topic modeling, collaborative filtering, and Wikipedia's category system). We use both automatic and human evaluation approaches for assessing the performance of our recommendation system, concluding that the category-based approach works best, achieving precision@10 of about 80% in the human evaluation.Comment: SIGIR '18 camera-read

Eliciting New Wikipedia Users' Interests via Automatically Mined Questionnaires: For a Warm Welcome, Not a Cold Start

Every day, thousands of users sign up as new Wikipedia contributors. Once joined, these users have to decide which articles to contribute to, which users to seek out and learn from or collaborate with, etc. Any such task is a hard and potentially frustrating one given the sheer size of Wikipedia. Supporting newcomers in their first steps by recommending articles they would enjoy editing or editors they would enjoy collaborating with is thus a promising route toward converting them into long-term contributors. Standard recommender systems, however, rely on users' histories of previous interactions with the platform. As such, these systems cannot make high-quality recommendations to newcomers without any previous interactions -- the so-called cold-start problem. The present paper addresses the cold-start problem on Wikipedia by developing a method for automatically building short questionnaires that, when completed by a newly registered Wikipedia user, can be used for a variety of purposes, including article recommendations that can help new editors get started. Our questionnaires are constructed based on the text of Wikipedia articles as well as the history of contributions by the already onboarded Wikipedia editors. We assess the quality of our questionnaire-based recommendations in an offline evaluation using historical data, as well as an online evaluation with hundreds of real Wikipedia newcomers, concluding that our method provides cohesive, human-readable questions that perform well against several baselines. By addressing the cold-start problem, this work can help with the sustainable growth and maintenance of Wikipedia's diverse editor community.Comment: Accepted at the 13th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM-2019

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Summary Background Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. Methods We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung’s disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. Findings We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung’s disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middleincome countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in lowincome countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. Interpretation Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between lowincome, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030

Reliability-Redundancy Allocation Using a Column Generation Approach

Abstract – A new column generation decomposition algorithm is described and demonstrated to determine efficient solutions for the reliability-redundancy allocation problem. The problem is a well-known nonlinear mixed integer programming problem which involves the maximization of system reliability by simultaneously selecting component reliability levels and redundancy levels as part of systems engineering design. The solution method is a decomposition approach based on the formulation of a restricted linear master problem and generation of possible better solutions through a set of subproblems. Numerical results are presented and compared to previously studied examples. The overall quality of the solutions matches or surpasses most of the existing methods with less computation time. 1

Evaluation of Anti-Inflammatory Effect of Chicory Extract on Inflammatory Factors of Interleukin 8 and TNFα in Rats with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Background & Objective: Polycystic ovary disease is an indicator of inflammatory factors caused by ovarian inflammation and an increase in the number of ovarian cysts. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of hydroalcoholic extract of chicory plant on inflammatory markers in polycystic ovary syndrome rats. Materials & Methods: In this study, adult female Wistar rats weighing 150-250 g were used and fed to the positive control group of metformin and negative control group via water gavage. At the end of blood sampling, serum levels of insulin, cholesterol, triglyceride and inflammatory factors interleukin-8 and TNFα were measured by ELISA. Results: The present study showed that 400 mg/kg abstract of chicory can significantly reduce sugar and insulin of blood and fat profile and inflammation factors IL8 and TNFα. Significance level was considered as p<0.05 Conclusion: Given the positive effect of chicory abstract on serum concentration of sugar and insulin hormone and fat profile and inflammation factors in the rats with PCOS, this composition can be used as an alternative drug for treating this disease