Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Topic Extraction from Microblog Posts Using Conversation Structures

Conventional topic models are ineffective for topic extraction from microblog messages since the lack of structure and context among the posts renders poor message-level word co-occurrence patterns. In this work, we organize microblog posts as conversation trees based on reposting and replying relations, which enrich context information to alleviate data sparseness. Our model generates words according to topic dependencies derived from the conversation structures. In specific, we differentiate messages as leader messages, which initiate key aspects of previously focused topics or shift the focus to different topics, and follower messages that do not introduce any new information but simply echo topics from the messages that they repost or reply. Our model captures the different extents that leader and follower messages may contain the key topical words, thus further enhances the quality of the induced topics. The results of thorough experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model.
Blur and Illumination Robust Face Recognition via Set-Theoretic Characterization

We address the problem of unconstrained face recognition from remotely acquired images. The main factors that make this problem challenging are image degradation due to blur, and appearance variations due to illumination and pose. In this paper, we address the problems of blur and illumination. We show that the set of all images obtained by blurring a given image forms a convex set. Based on this set-theoretic characterization, we propose a blur-robust algorithm whose main step involves solving simple convex optimization problems. We do not assume any parametric form for the blur kernels, however, if this information is available it can be easily incorporated into our algorithm. Furthermore, using the low-dimensional model for illumination variations, we show that the set of all images obtained from a face image by blurring it and by changing the illumination conditions forms a bi-convex set. Based on this characterization, we propose a blur and illumination-robust algorithm. Our experiments on a challenging real dataset obtained in uncontrolled settings illustrate the importance of jointly modeling blur and illumination.
Comparison of in yivo and in Vitro Effects of Continuous Exposure of LI 210 Cells to 6-Thioguanine 1

In this study the cytokinetic and antitumor effects of 12-h continuous treatment with 6-thioguanine (TG) were studied in LI 210 cells in vivo and in vitro. Loss of clonogenicity in vitro was maximized at a drug concentration of 0.2 UM. Higher drug concentrations produced less cell kill, and the surviving fraction observed after exposure to 25 A>MTG was 1 log higher than at 0.2 /IM (2% versus 0.2% of control cloning efficiency, respectively). Delayed G2 arrest in vitro was also found to be most pronounced at 0.2 /<M, with GÃ¬arrest more predominant at higher concentrations. Studies in vivo were conducted using CS7BL x DBA/2 I , mice, with or without advanced 1.1210 ascites tumor. In initial experiments per formed on animals without tumor, the 50% lethal dose for 12-h s.c. infusions of TG was approximately 0.8 Â«imol/kg/min.Correlation of steady-state TG plasma levels with infusion rate revealed a linear rela tionship up to 0.62 Â¿imol/kg/min, above which the TG plasma concentra tion increased disproportionately to input rate. Total body clearance of TG, calculated from the linear portion of this curve, was 123 ml/kg/min. The antitumor effects of TG infusions were correlated with steady state plasma concentrations achieved in each individual animal, and it was found that dose rates yielding levels from 1 to 10 tiM increased survival time by about 40%, with no apparent optimum plasma level in this range. Examination of the cytokinetic effects caused by TG infusions at the low and high ends of this maximally therapeutic range showed that, as was the case in vitro, lower concentrations of TG caused delayed G2 arrest, while higher concentrations induced more rapid G, arrest. On the basis of these, as well as previous findings, we propose that the operative mechanism of cell kill by TG in vivo may be dose dependent and may be reflected by the relative degree of G2 versus Gt arrest. We also suggest that the appropriate strategy for the clinical use of TG is to determine the drug concentration which produces maximum G2 arrest of tumor cells, and to infuse continuously at a rate to achieve that level for the maximum time tolerated by the patient, rather than to select an arbitrary length of infusion followed by escalation to maximum tolerated drug concentration.
A pr 2 00 7 Finite bounded expanding white hole universe without dark matter

The solution of Einstein’s field equations in Cosmological General Relativity (CGR), where the Galaxy is at the center of a finite yet bounded spherically symmetrical isotropic gravitational field, is identical with the unbounded solution. This leads to the conclusion that the Universe may be viewed as a finite expanding white hole. The fact that CGR has been successful in describing the distance modulus verses redshift data of the high-redshift type Ia supernovae means that the data cannot distinguish between unbounded models and those with finite bounded radii of at least cτ . Also it is shown that the Universe is spatially flat at the current epoch and has been at all past epochs where it was matter dominated.
Words and Their Metaphors : A Corpus-Based Approach

In this paper, I propose and demonstrate a corpus-based approach to the investigation of metaphorical target domains based on retrieving representative lexical items from the target domain and identifying the metaphorical expressions associated with them. I show that this approach is superior in terms of data coverage compared to the traditional method of eclectically collecting citations or gathering data from introspection. In addition to its superior coverage, a corpus-based approach allows us to quantify the frequency of individual metaphors, and I show how central metaphors can be identified on the basis of such quantitative data. Finally, I argue that a focus on metaphors associated with individual lexical items opens up the possibility of investigating the interaction between metaphor and lexical semantics.
High Resolution Melting Analysis Is a More Sensitive and Effective Alternative to Gel-Based Platforms in Analysis of SSR – An Example in Citrus

High resolution melting curve analysis (HRM) has been used as an efficient, accurate and cost-effective tool to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or insertions or deletions (INDELs). However, its efficiency, accuracy and applicability to discriminate microsatellite polymorphism have not been extensively assessed. The traditional protocols used for SSR genotyping include PCR amplification of the DNA fragment and the separation of the fragments on electrophoresis-based platform. However, post-PCR handling processes are laborious and costly. Furthermore, SNPs present in the sequences flanking repeat motif cannot be detected by polyacrylamide-gel-electrophoresis based methods. In the present study, we compared the discriminating power of HRM with the traditional electrophoresis-based methods and provided a panel of primers for HRM genotyping in Citrus. The results showed that sixteen SSR markers produced distinct polymorphic melting curves among the Citrus spp investigated through HRM analysis. Among those, 10 showed more genotypes by HRM analysis than capillary electrophoresis owing to the presence of SNPs in the amplicons. For the SSR markers without SNPs present in the flanking region, HRM also gave distinct melting curves which detected same genotypes as were shown in capillary electrophoresis (CE) analysis. Moreover, HRM analysis allowed the discrimination of most of the 15 citrus genotypes and the resulting genetic distance analysis clustered them into three main branches. In conclusion, it has been approved that HRM is not only an efficient and cost-effective alternative of electrophoresis-based method for SSR markers, but also a method to uncover more polymorphisms contributed by SNPs present in SSRs. It was therefore suggested that the panel of SSR markers could be used in a variety of applications in the citrus biodiversity and breeding programs using HRM analysis. Furthermore, we speculate that the HRM analysis can be employed to analyse SSR markers in a wide range of applications in all other species.
Dark matter signals from Draco and Willman 1: prospects for MAGIC II and CTA

The next generation of ground-based Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes will play an important role in indirect dark matter searches. In this article, we consider two particularly promising candidate sources for dark matter annihilation signals, the nearby dwarf galaxies Draco and Willman 1, and study the prospects of detecting such a signal for the soon-operating MAGIC II telescope system as well as for the planned installation of CTA, taking special care of describing the experimental features that affect the detectional prospects. For the first time in such studies, we fully take into account the effect of internal bremsstrahlung, which has recently been shown to considerably enhance, in some cases, the gamma-ray flux in the high energies domain where Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes operate, thus leading to significantly harder annihilation spectra than traditionally considered. While the detection of the spectral features introduced by internal bremsstrahlung would constitute a smoking gun signature for dark matter annihilation, we find that for most models the overall flux still remains at a level that will be challenging to detect, unless one adopts somewhat favorable descriptions of the smooth dark matter distribution in the dwarfs.
The Effect of Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies on Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Freshman EFL Students

This study was designed to investigate the effects of cognitive and metacognitive listening strategies on the listening-related self-efficacy beliefs of EFL students. A total of 146 first-year students, studying at ELT Department of a state university’s educational faculty, took part in the study. The sample of this study is composed of the whole population. Motivational Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), an 81-item questionnaire, was administered to participants. The questionnaire consisted of three main dimensions: motivational beliefs, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, and resource management. However, the participants answered 39 items that focused on cognitive and metacognitive dimensions (rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and metacognitive self-regulation) and self-efficacy sub-dimensions. The statistical interpretation of the data was done using Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regression analysis. The R square of the regression model was found to be . 524, and it is significant at the . 01 level, which means that the variables in this regression model (rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and metacognitive self-regulation), altogether, significantly explain 52.4% of the variance in the dependent variable (listening comprehension related self-efficacy). The regression model was further analyzed in order to investigate the effects of each variable on self-efficacy. It is found that all of the strategies significantly affected the dependent variable at . 01 level. In a second regression model, which aimed to see the contribution of controlling variables (gender and GPA), the variables of ‘gender and GPA’ were entered in the model as one block and all other variables as another block. The results showed that all variables with gender and GPA significantly explain 53.1% of the variance in the dependent variable. The unique contributions of gender and GPA were 1%, which is not significant. In other words, controlling for ‘gender and GPA’ cognitive and metacognitive strategies explained %51.3 of the variance in self-efficacy. This means that the relationship among listening related cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and self-efficacy is very important and has some implications. The results of the study are discussed in terms of cognitive & metacognitive strategies, self-efficacy and listening comprehension. Last, some pedagogical implications are provided in the light of the findings.
AGN are cooler than you think: the intrinsic far-IR emission from QSOs

We present an intrinsic AGN spectral energy distribution (SED) extending from the optical to the submm, derived with a sample of unobscured, optically luminous (νLν,5100 >1043.5 erg s−1) QSOs at z < 0.18 from the Palomar Green survey. The intrinsic AGN SED was computed by removing the contribution from stars using the 11.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) feature in the QSOs’ mid-IR spectra; the 1σ uncertainty on the SED ranges between 12 and 45 per cent as a function of wavelength and is a combination of PAH flux measurement errors and the uncertainties related to the conversion between PAH luminosity and star-forming luminosity. Longwards of 20 μm, the shape of the intrinsic AGN SED is independent of the AGN power indicating that our template should be applicable to all systems hosting luminous AGN (νLν, 5100 or LX(2–10 keV) _ 1043.5 erg s−1). We note that for our sample of luminous QSOs, the average AGN emission is at least as high as, and mostly higher than, the total stellar powered emission at all wavelengths from the optical to the submm. This implies that in many galaxies hosting powerful AGN, there is no ‘safe’ broad-band photometric observation (at λ < 1000 μm) which can be used in calculating star formation rates without subtracting the AGN contribution. Roughly, the AGN contribution may be ignored only if the intrinsic AGN luminosity at 5100 AA is at least a factor of 4 smaller than the total infrared luminosity (LIR, 8–1000 μm) of the galaxy. Finally, we examine the implication of our work in statistical studies of star formation in AGN host galaxies.
Exploration through enrichment: a visual analytics approach for animal movement

The analysis of trajectories has become an important field in geographic visualization, as cheap GPS sensors have become commonplace and, in many cases, valuable information can be derived either from the data themselves or their metadata if processed and visualized in the right way. However, showing the "right" information to highlight dependencies or correlations between different measurements remains a challenge, because the technical intricacies of applying a combination of automatic and visual analysis methods prevents the majority of domain experts from analyzing and exploring the full wealth of their movement data. This paper presents an exploration through enrichment approach, which enables iterative generation of metadata based on exploratory findings and is aimed at enabling domain experts to explore their data beyond traditional means.
Revisiting Mathematical Attitudes of students in Secondary Education

The aim of this paper is three-fold. First, we review and briefly synthesise the main points of the recent debate around the concept of ‘attitudes to mathematics’. We then present the measurement methodology we employed to capture ‘attitudes to mathematics’ in the context of a large scale UK project with secondary school students, and how these results inform the theoretical debate. Finally, we report some substantive results about how the resulting attitudinal constructs, namely ‘maths disposition’ and ‘maths identity’ change during one academic year, and between various groups of interest (e.g. gender). We conclude with a brief discussion of methodological and educational implications.
Numerical Analysis of Historic Gold Production Cycles and Implications for Future Sub-Cycles~!2009-12-14~!2010-01-22~!2010-03-18~!

Gold production at an industrial scale developed with the discovery of gold in Australia and the USA in the middle of the 19 century. Since then the gold production rose exponentially with a rate of approximately 2.0% thus reflecting a first-order production cycle. Within this rise, however, four individual sub-cycles can be identified. The current sub-cycle is predicted to lead from a peak in 2001 of 2,600 tons to a global production of 1,600 tons in the year 2018 or even as little as 780 tons in 2026. Further analysis of these sub-cycles, consideration of declining ore grades and energetic constraints lead us to suggest that the year 2001 indeed could have been the peak-gold year of the main 'Hubbert-style' production cycle. A cumulative achievable gold production between 230,000 and 280,000 tons is derived from the application of the so-called Hubbert Linearization. This compares well with a minimum of about 285,000 tons of combined past production and known reserves and resources.
Kinetic turbulence simulations at extreme scale on leadership-class systems

Reliable predictive simulation capability addressing confinement properties in magnetically confined fusion plasmas is critically-important for ITER, a 20 billion dollar international burning plasma device under construction in France. The complex study of kinetic turbulence, which can severely limit the energy confinement and impact the economic viability of fusion systems, requires simulations at extreme scale for such an unprecedented device size. Our newly optimized, global, ab initio particle-in-cell code solving the nonlinear equations underlying gyrokinetic theory achieves excellent performance with respect to “time to solution” at the full capacity of the IBM Blue Gene/Q on 786,432 cores of Mira at ALCF and recently of the 1,572,864 cores of Sequoia at LLNL. Recent multithreading and domain decomposition optimizations in the new GTC-P code represent critically important software advances for modern, low memory per core systems by enabling routine simulations at unprecedented size (130 million grid points ITER-scale) and resolution (65 billion particles).
Integrated action crossing method for Drug-Drug Interactions prediction in noncommunicable diseases based on neural networks

Drug-Drug Interactions (DDI) is a cause of treatment inefficacy and toxicity. The most DDI involve drug metabolism which related to enzyme and transporter protein. Drug-enzyme actions that alter the metabolism of other drugs consist of substrate, inhibitor and inducer. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death, drugs that are used in NCDs can increase interaction probability because their long-term usage. This paper proposes Integrated Action Crossing (IAC), a new attribute generation method for DDIs prediction in NCDs. Drugs attributes in NCDs categories were extracted. The actions of enzymes and transporter proteins were crossed for generating dataset for prediction model creation. Neural network (NN) and others machine learning were investigated. Five-fold cross validation was performed for evaluaing the prediction model performance. The results showed that 2 layers NN obtained the best performance of NCDs DDIs prediction model at the accuracy of 83.15%.
Accurate Recovery of Three-Dimensional Shape from Image Focus

A new shape-from-focus method is described which is based on a new concept, named focused image surface (FIS). FIS of an object is defined as the surface formed by the set of points at which the object points are focused by a camera lens. According to paraxial-geometric optics, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the shape of an object and the shape of its FIS. Therefore, the problem of shape recovery can be posed as the problem of determining the shape of the FIS. From the shape of FIS the shape of the object is easily obtained. In this paper the shape of the FIS is determined by searching for a shape which maximizes a focus measure. In contrast to previous literature where the focus measure is computed over the planar image detector of the camera, here the focus measure is computed over the FIS. This results in more accurate shape recovery than the traditional methods. Also, using FIS, a more accurate focused image can be reconstructed from a sequence of images than is possible with traditional methods. The new method has been implemented on an actual camera system, and the results of shape recovery and focused image reconstruction are presented. >
Effect of Anatomical Distribution of Mast Cells on Their Defense Function against Bacterial Infections

Mast cells were depleted in the peritoneal cavity of WBB6F1-tg/tg mice that did not express a transcription factor, MITF. When acute bacterial peritonitis was induced in WBB6F1-+/+, WBB6F1-W/W v, and WBB6F1-tg/tg mice, the proportion of surviving WBB6F1-+/+ mice was significantly higher than that of surviving WBB6F1-W/W v or WBB6F1-tg/tg mice. The poor survival of WBB6F1-W/W v and WBB6F1-tg/tg mice was attributed to the deficient influx of neutrophils into the peritoneal cavity. The injection of cultured mast cells (CMCs) derived from WBB6F1-+/+ mice normalized the neutrophil influx and reduced survival rate in WBB6F1-W/W v mice, but not in WBB6F1-tg/tg mice. This was not attributable to a defect of neutrophils because injection of TNF-α increased the neutrophil influx and survival rate in both WBB6F1-W/W v and WBB6F1-tg/tg mice. Although WBB6F1-+/+ CMCs injection normalized the number of mast cells in both the peritoneal cavity and mesentery of WBB6F1-W/W v mice, it normalized the number of mast cells only in the peritoneal cavity of WBB6F1-tg/tg mice. Mast cells within the mesentery or mast cells in the vicinity of blood vessels appeared to play an important role against the acute bacterial peritonitis. WBB6F1-tg/tg mice may be useful for studying the effect of anatomical distribution of mast cells on their antiseptic function.
Noncritical-Topological Correspondence: Disc Amplitudes and Noncompact Branes

We examine the duality between type 0 noncritical strings and topological B-model strings, with special emphasis on the flux dependence. The former theory is known to exhibit holomorphic factorisation upto a subtle flux-dependent disc term. We give a precise definition of the B-model dual and propose that it includes both compact and noncompact B-branes. The former give the factorised part of the free energy, while the latter violate holomorphic factorisation and contribute the desired disc term. These observations are generalised to rational radii, for which we derive a nonperturbatively exact result. We also show that our picture extends to a proposed alternative topological-anti-topological picture of the correspondence for type 0 strings.
An Analysis Of Oklahoma Direct Marketing Outlets: Case Study Of Produce Farmers' Markets

The objectives of this study are to examine consumer preferences among various marketing channels including direct marketing in Oklahoma, and to analyze the impact of various demographic variables on purchasing choice. Specifically, this research focuses on the links between demographic factors and shopping preferences. Data from consumers' survey in 21 farmers' markets in Oklahoma will be used to analyze consumer preferences using an ordered logistic regression analysis method. Farmers' market producers and market managers were also surveyed. The results of this study identify consumer characteristics that influence produce demand and consequently growers' return at Oklahoma farmers' market.
An Alternative Way to Generalize the Pentagon

We introduce the concept of a pentagonal geometry as a generalization of the pentagon and the Desargues configuration, in the same vein that the generalized polygons share the fundamental properties of ordinary polygons. In short, a pentagonal geometry is a regular partial linear space in which for all points x, the points not collinear with the point x, form a line. We compute bounds on their parameters, give some constructions, obtain some nonexistence results for seemingly feasible parameters and suggest a cryptographic application related to identifying codes of partial linear spaces.