Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Super-Participants to Super-Echoed. Participation in the 2018 Italian Electoral Twittersphere

Who and how takes part in a typical Twitter discussion about political elections? In what degree? In our study we try to shed some light on these questions by examining the case of Italian 2018 national election. Starting from the database that we collected during the latest general campaign, we analyse all the users who participated in the discussion unfolding in the two months preceding the vote. To do that, we exploit the concept of super-participants isolating the 1% of users who generate large part of the discussion. We study them identifying the two main participation flows in the Twittersphere generated by tweets and retweets, discovering that participation curves are very skewed. To address issues of centrality and inclusiveness in online communication, we look at who the super-participants are in the broader society, finding that many of them are citizens. To inquire if participation draws attention, we identify a set of super-echoed users discovering that, belonging to elite categories is still an advantage given that starting popularity is often more important to be shared than participation. In fact, citizens’ super-participation is not mirrored by an equally consistent received attention. Notwithstanding, political supporters and satirical blogs emerge to be two very interesting categories.
The Role of Parents Involvement Towards Students Academic Performance Among Public Primary Schools in Tanzania : A Case of Selected Primary Schools In Ilala Municipality

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of parents’ involvement in educational processes and its effects on primary school pupils’ academic performance in Ilala municipality, in Dar es Salaam region. A sample of 120 purposively randomly selected respondents including primary school teachers, head teachers, parents and pupils. This study was intended to address three specific research objectives namely to; explore the school modalities through which parents are involved in supporting primary school children academic development; investigate the contribution of parents involvement in children academic performance in primary schools; and finally, to examine the difference in academic performance between primary school pupils who receive parental support from pupils who completely do not receive it. A Case study design was used to collect data from the respondents using questionnaires, interviews and documentary reviews that were administered to school committees’ chairpersons, parents and teachers and pupils. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to tape respondents’ subjective views and simple percentages from the frequent responses for descriptive purposes. The SPSS 22.0 version was used for data analysis of simple for descriptive statistics and content analysis for qualitative data. The study indicated that there were several methods used in public schools to involve parents and guardians into education processes of their school children in supporting primary school pupils’ academic achievement. The study recommended conducting a quantitative study in order to test hypotheses by comparing results from public and private schools for comparative and generalisation purposes.
Congenital Pouch Colon: A Preliminary Report from Pakistan

Background: Congenital pouch colon (CPC) is a rare entity in patients of anorectal malformations (ARM) requiring special consideration as to the management. This study is aimed at evaluating the presentation, management, and the outcome of initial surgery in patients with CPC. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was conducted in the department of Pediatric Surgery of our institute during May 2007- May 2010. The Information about the demography, clinical features, investigations, management, and the outcome of initial surgery was retrieved and analyzed. Results: There were 21 patients of CPC managed during the study period. Sixteen (76%) were males and five (24%) females (M:F 3.2:1). Mean age of presentation was 4.8 days with a range of 12 hours to 45 days. In 18 (85.7%) patients, CPC was found with high ARMs, whereas, in 3 (14.3%) patients it was associated with low ARMs. Imperforate anus with moderate to massive abdominal distension was the presentation in 16 (76%) patients. Abdominal radiographs helped in preoperative diagnosis in 8 patients. Two patients had pneumoperitoneum on abdominal radiographs. At operation, type I CPC was found in 9 (42.8%) patients, type II in 5 (23.8%), type III in 2 (9.5%) patients, and type IV CPC in 5 (23.8%) patients. In 11 (52.4%) patients, pouch was emptied and retained with proximal enterostomy. In 7 (33.3%) patients, end enterostomy with pouch excision was done. In two patients, a window colostomy was formed. In one patient, pouch was disconnected from the normal bowel and Hartmann’s pouch with end ileostomy was formed. There were 2 (9.5%) deaths in our series. Conclusion: CPC is a rare malformation. Massive abdominal distension with imperforate anus is the common presentation. Optimum management can reduce the morbidity and mortality.
Exoplanet predictions based on the generalized Titius–Bode relation

We evaluate the extent to which newly detected exoplanetary systems containing at least four planets adhere to a generalized Titius–Bode (TB) relation. We find that the majority of exoplanet systems in our sample adhere to the TB relation to a greater extent than the Solar system does, particularly those detected by the Kepler mission. We use a generalized TB relation to make a list of predictions for the existence of 141 additional exoplanets in 68 multiple-exoplanet systems: 73 candidates from interpolation, 68 candidates from extrapolation. We predict the existence of a low-radius ( R< 2.5R ⊕ ) exoplanet within the habitable zone of KOI-812 and that the average number of planets in the habitable zone of a star is 1–2. The usefulness of the TB relation and its validation as a tool for predicting planets will be partially tested by upcoming Kepler data releases.
Object recognition with informative features and linear classification

We show that efficient object recognition can be obtained by combining informative features with linear classification. The results demonstrate the superiority of informative class-specific features, as compared with generic type features such as wavelets, for the task of object recognition. We show that information rich features can reach optimal performance with simple linear separation rules, while generic feature based classifiers require more complex classification schemes. This is significant because efficient and optimal methods have been developed for spaces that allow linear separation. To compare different strategies for feature extraction, we trained and compared classifiers working in feature spaces of the same low dimensionality, using two feature types (image fragments vs. wavelets) and two classification rules (linear hyperplane and a Bayesian network). The results show that by maximizing the individual information of the features, it is possible to obtain efficient classification by a simple linear separating rule, as well as more efficient learning.
Postmortem diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and its complications

Diabetes mellitus has become a major cause of death worldwide and diabetic ketoacidosis is the most common cause of death in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Acute complications of diabetes mellitus as causes of death may be difficult to diagnose due to missing characteristic macroscopic and microscopic findings. Biochemical analyses, including vitreous glucose, blood (or alternative specimen) beta-hydroxybutyrate, and blood glycated hemoglobin determination, may complement postmortem investigations and provide useful information for determining the cause of death even in corpses with advanced decompositional changes. In this article, we performed a review of the literature pertaining to the diagnostic performance of classical and novel biochemical parameters that may be used in the forensic casework to identify disorders in glucose metabolism. We also present a review focusing on the usefulness of traditional and alternative specimens that can be sampled and subsequently analyzed to diagnose acute complications of diabetes mellitus as causes of death.
A Case of Giant Colonic Muco-submucosal Elongated Polyps Associated with Intussusception

Colonic muco-submucosal elongated polyp (CMSEP), a newly categorized non-neoplastic colorectal polyp, is a pedunculated and elongated polyp composed of normal mucosal and submucosal layers without any proper muscle layer. We herein report a giant variant of CMSEP associated with intussusception in the rectosigmoid colon, with a review of the literature. A 48-year-old woman underwent a laparoscopic low anterior resection due to multiple large submucosal polypoid masses associated with intussusception. Grossly, the colonic masses were multiple pedunculated polyps with a long stalk and branches ranging in size from a few millimeters to 14.0 cm in length. Microscopically, there was no evidence of hyperplasia, atypia, or active inflammation in the mucosa. The submucosal layers were composed of edematous and fibrotic stroma with fat tissue, dilated vessels, and lymphoid follicles.
Enhancing Example-Based Learning: Teaching on Video Increases Arousal and Improves Problem-Solving Performance

Recent findings show that after studying a text, teaching the learned content on video to a fictitious peer student improves learning more than restudying the content. This benefit may be in part due to increased arousal associated with the teaching activity. The present experiment investigated whether teaching on video is also effective for acquiring problem-solving skills from worked examples, and explored the role of cognitive load, worry, and arousal. Participants (N = 61 university students) first studied two worked examples on electrical circuits troubleshooting and completed a practice problem. Then they either taught the content of a worked example of the practice problem on video (teaching condition) or studied that worked example (control condition) for the same amount of time. Self-reported cognitive load was measured after each task and self-reported worry after the final task. Effects on arousal were explored via the Empatica wristband measuring electrodermal activity (EDA; i.e., galvanic skin response). Teaching the content of the worked example on video was not associated with more worry, but did result in higher perceived cognitive load, more arousal, and better performance on isomorphic and transfer problems on the posttest. Although this finding has to be interpreted with caution, teaching also seemed to moderate the effect of prior knowledge on transfer that was present in the study condition. This suggests that teaching is particularly effective for students who initially have low prior knowledge.
Canopy‐scale kinetic fractionation of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor isotopes

The carbon and oxygen isotopes of CO2 and the oxygen isotopes of H2O are powerful tracers for constraining the dynamics of carbon uptake and water flux on land. The role of land biota in the atmospheric budgets of these isotopes has been extensively explored through the lens of leaf‐scale observations. At the ecosystem scale, kinetic fractionation is associated with molecular and turbulent diffusion. Intuitively, air turbulence, being nondiscriminative in diffusing materials, should act to erase the kinetic effect. Using the first canopy‐scale isotopic flux measurements, we show just the opposite: that in the terrestrial environment, air turbulence enhances the effect, rather than suppressing it. The sensitivity of kinetic fractionation to turbulence is striking in situations where the canopy resistance is comparable to or lower than the aerodynamic resistance. Accounting for turbulent diffusion greatly improves land surface model predictions of the isoforcing of 18O‐CO2 and transpiration enrichment of leaf water in 18O‐H2O in field conditions. Our results suggest that variations in surface roughness across the landscape can contribute to spatial variations in the composition of atmospheric 18O‐CO2 and that temporal trends in wind circulation on land can play a role in the interannual variability of atmospheric 18O‐CO2. In comparison, air turbulence has a limited effect on the isoforcing of 13C‐CO2.
Angiopoietin-1 alters microvascular permeability coefficients in vivo via modification of endothelial glycocalyx

Aims In this study, we wished to determine whether angiopoietin-1 (Ang1) modified the permeability coefficients of non-inflamed, intact continuous, and fenestrated microvessels in vivo and to elucidate the underlying cellular mechanisms. Methods and results Permeability coefficients were measured using the Landis–Michel technique (in frog and rat mesenteric microvessels) and an oncopressive permeability technique (in glomeruli). Ang1 decreased water permeability (LP: hydraulic conductivity) in continuous and fenestrated microvessels and increased the retention of albumin (σ: reflection coefficient) in continuous microvessels. Endothelial glycocalyx is common to these anatomically distinct microvascular beds, and contributes to the magnitude of both LP and σ. Ang1 treatment increased the depth of endothelial glycocalyx in intact microvessels and increased the content of glycosaminoglycan of cultured microvascular endothelial cell supernatant. Ang1 also prevented the pronase-induced increase in LP (attributable to selective removal of endothelial glycocalyx by pronase) by restoration of glycocalyx at the endothelial cell surface. The reduction in permeability was inhibited by a cell transport inhibitor, Brefeldin. Conclusion Ang1 modifies basal microvessel permeability coefficients, in keeping with previous reports demonstrating reduced solute flux in inflamed vessels. Anatomical, biochemical, and physiological evidence indicates that modification of endothelial glycocalyx is a novel mechanism of action of Ang1 that contributes to these effects.
Privacy preserving cloud data access with multi-authorities

Cloud computing is a revolutionary computing paradigm which enables flexible, on-demand and low-cost usage of computing resources. Those advantages, ironically, are the causes of security and privacy problems, which emerge because the data owned by different users are stored in some cloud servers instead of under their own control. To deal with security problems, various schemes based on the Attribute-Based Encryption have been proposed recently. However, the privacy problem of cloud computing is yet to be solved. This paper presents an anonymous privilege control scheme AnonyControl to address not only the data privacy problem in a cloud storage, but also the user identity privacy issues in existing access control schemes. By using multiple authorities in cloud computing system, our proposed scheme achieves anonymous cloud data access and fine-grained privilege control. Our security proof and performance analysis shows that AnonyControl is both secure and efficient for cloud computing environment.
Adult Romantic Attachment: Theoretical Developments, Emerging Controversies, and Unanswered Questions

The authors review the theory of romantic, or pair-bond, attachment as it was originally formulated by C. Hazan and P. R. Shaver in 1987 and describe how it has evolved over more than a decade. In addition, they discuss 5 issues related to the theory that need further clarification: (a) the nature of attachment relationships, (b) the evolution and function of attachment in adulthood, (c) models of individual differences in attachment, (d) continuity and change in attachment security, and (e) the integration of attachment, sex, and caregiving. In discussing these issues, they provide leads for future research and outline a more complete theory of romantic attachment.
Three distinct velocities of elongating RNA polymerase define exons and introns

Differential elongation rates of RNA polymerase II (RNAP) have been posited to be a critical determinant for pre-mRNA splicing. Molecular dissection of mechanisms coupling transcription elongation rate with splicing requires knowledge of instantaneous RNAP elongation velocity at exon and introns. However, only average RNAP elongation rates over large genomic distances can be inferred with current approaches, and local instantaneous velocities of the elongating RNA polymerase across endogenous genomic regions remain difficult to determine at sufficient resolution to enable detailed kinetic analysis of RNAP at exons. In order to overcome these challenges and to investigate kinetic features of RNAP elongation at genomic scale, we have employed global nuclear run-on sequencing (GRO-seq) method to infer changes in local RNAP elongation rates across the human genome, as changes in the residence time of RNAP. Using this approach, we have investigated functional coupling between the changes in local pattern of RNAP elongation rate at the exons and their general expression level, as inferred by sequencing of mRNAs (mRNA-seq). Our genomic level analyses reveal acceleration of RNAP at lowly expressed exons and confirm the previously reported deceleration of RNAP at highly expressed exons, suggesting variable local velocities of elongating RNAP that are potentially associated with different inclusion or exclusion rates of exons across the human genome. AUTHOR SUMMARY Understanding the mechanisms that enable high precision recognition and splicing of exons is fundamental to many aspects of human development and disease. Emerging data suggest that the speed of the elongating RNA polymerase affects pre-mRNA splicing; however, systematic genomic investigation of RNAP elongation speed and pre-mRNA have been lacking. Using a recently developed method for detecting synthesized nascent RNAs, we have inferred variable elongation rates of RNA polymerase II (RNAP) that are associated with included exons, introns and excluded exons, across the human genome. From this analysis, we have identified acceleration of RNAP at exons as a major determinant of exon exclusion across the genome, while confirming previous studies showing deceleration of RNAP at included exons.
Evidence for the Fast Exercise Drive to Breathe During Sinusoidal Cycle Ergometry

Human experimentation investigating the role of limb movement frequency on the fast exercise drive to breathe has not reached agreement on the mechanism that produces this response. To investigate the role of limb movement frequency, and endurance exercise training on the fast exercise drive to breathe, two sinusoidal exercise protocols were employed in these experiments: one at constant workload with sinusoidal pedaling cadence, and a second with sinusoidal workload at constant cadence. Metabolic rate (Vo2) was matched between these two experiments. The ventilation response was significantly faster when limb movement speed was varied, compared to when pedal loading was varied. Ventilation response amplitudes were significantly higher during pedal cadence variation versus pedal loading variation. Similar findings were obtained for endurance athletes, with significantly attenuated ventilation responses to exercise versus control subjects. These results demonstrate that fast changes in limb movement frequency are a potent stimulus to ventilation at submaximal workloads, and this response is susceptible to attenuation through training.
On crowd density estimation for surveillance

The goal of this work is to use computer vision to measure crowd density in outdoor scenes. Crowd density estimation is an important task in crowd monitoring. The assessment is carried out using images of a graduation scene which illustrated variation of illumination due to textured brick surface, clothing and changes of weather. Image features were extracted using Grey Level Dependency Matrix, Minkowski Fractal Dimension and a new method called Translation Invariant Orthonormal Chebyshev Moments. The features were then classified into a range of density by using a Self Organizing Map. Three different techniques were used and a comparison on the classification results investigates the best performance for measuring crowd density by vision.
Abnormal wave propagation in passive media

Abnormal velocities in passive structures such as one-dimensional (1-D) photonic crystals and a slab having a negative index of refraction are discussed. In the case of 1-D photonic crystal, the frequency- and time-domain experiments for waves tuned to the bandgap of the photonic crystal demonstrate a positive group velocity exceeding the speed of light in vacuum (superluminal). In the case of a medium with negative index of refraction, our theoretical studies show that such a medium can support positive group and negative phase velocities (backward waves), as well as negative group and negative phase velocities. The meaning of superluminal group velocity and negative group velocity, or equally, positive superluminal group delay and negative group delay, are discussed. It is shown that despite their counterintuitive meaning there are no contradictions with the requirements of relativistic causality (Einstein causality). To clearly demonstrate this, the important subject of the "front" is reintroduced.
Distinct Pathways From Parental Beliefs and Practices to Children’s Numeric Skills

ABSTRACT It is imperative to identify contextual factors contributing to the development of early math skills, considering their role in later academic achievement. To pursue this goal, the present study investigated the paths connecting parental beliefs and practices during the preschool years to children’s numeric skills at the end of kindergarten (N = 98). Results were consistent with theoretical predictions of specific relations between particular types of parental input and different aspects of number knowledge. Direct math learning activities mediated the relation between parental beliefs and children’s number identification skills. Daily activities involving quantitative components mediated the relation between parental beliefs and children’s numerical magnitude understanding. Both types of activities predicted arithmetic skills that integrate the basic aspects of symbolic number knowledge. These findings contribute to developmental theory by specifying how characteristics of children’s environments are related to particular aspects of their development, which is critical for informing intervention work to improve early math skills.
Triplet probabilistic embedding for face verification and clustering

Despite significant progress made over the past twenty five years, unconstrained face verification remains a challenging problem. This paper proposes an approach that couples a deep CNN-based approach with a low-dimensional discriminative embedding step, learned using triplet probability constraints to address the unconstrained face verification problem. Aside from yielding performance improvements, this embedding provides significant advantages in terms of memory and for post-processing operations like subject specific clustering. Experiments on the challenging IJB-A dataset show that the proposed algorithm performs close to the state of the art methods in verification and identification metrics, while requiring much less training data and training/test time. The superior performance of the proposed method on the CFP dataset shows that the representation learned by our deep CNN is robust to large pose variation. Furthermore, we demonstrate the robustness of deep features to challenges including age, pose, blur and clutter by performing simple clustering experiments on both IJB-A and LFW datasets.