Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Students' perceived factors of learning computer science education through a social networking site

Despite the increasing popularity of social networking sites (SNS) due to a major involvement of students in online social activities, there is a significant challenge involved in using SNS, particularly as a learning platform in teaching computer science education (CSE) to undergraduate students in non-engineering and engineering studies. To find out the perceived factors of learning through SNS approaches, questionnaires were distributed to a total of 219 undergraduate students ranging from non-engineering (n=80) to engineering (n=139). From the questionnaire, five constructs were identified as: sharing perspective, communicative process, cohesiveness expression, peer interaction, and tools and resources. The evaluation of students’ learning transcripts in SNS indicated teaching CSE through SNS enhanced students’ understanding of CSE. The study is shown to support social constructivism, which promotes knowledge that is distributed across a network of connections.
Potential Animal Models of Lacunar Stroke: A Systematic Review

Background and Purpose— Lacunar ischemic stroke accounts for 25% of all ischemic strokes, but the exact etiology is unknown. Numerous pathophysiologies have been proposed, including atheroma and endothelial dysfunction. Models of any of these pathological features would aid understanding of the etiology and help develop treatments for lacunar stroke. We therefore aimed to assess the relevance of all available potential animal models of lacunar stroke. Methods— We systematically reviewed the published literature for animal models that could represent lacunar stroke using validated search strategies. We included studies that could represent an aspect of lacunar stroke as well as those aiming to model conditions with potentially similar pathology and extracted data on species, induction method, and resulting brain and vessel lesions. Results— From 5670 papers, 41 studies (46 papers) met inclusion criteria representing over 10 different classes of stroke induction. Important data like infarct size and animal numbers were often missing. Many models’ infarcts were too large or affected the cortex. Emboli mostly caused cortical but not small subcortical lesions. Most models focused on creating ischemic lesions in brain tissue. Only one (spontaneous lesions in spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rats) also mimicked small vessel pathology. Here, the precursor to small vessel and brain damage was blood–brain barrier failure. Conclusion— Some animal models produce small subcortical infarcts, but few mimic the human small vessel pathology. Models of small vessel disease could help improve understanding of human lacunar disease, particularly to clarify factors associated with the small vessel morphological changes preceding brain damage. Much lacunar stroke may arise after blood–brain barrier disruption.
Sensing Pathogens and Tuning Immune Responses

The immune system is capable of making qualitatively distinct responses against different microbial infections, and recent advances are starting to reveal how it manages this complex task. An integral component of the immune system is a network of cells known as dendritic cells (DCs), which sense different microbial stimuli and convey this information to lymphocytes. A better understanding of DC biology has allowed a model to be constructed in which the type of immune response to an infection is viewed as a function of several determinants, including the subpopulation of DCs, the nature of the microbe, microbe recognition receptors, and the cytokine microenvironment.
Genome-wide Scan of Archaic Hominin Introgressions in Eurasians Reveals Complex Admixture History

Introgressions from Neanderthals and Denisovans were detected in modern humans. Introgressions from other archaic hominins were also implicated, however, identification of which poses a great technical challenge. Here, we introduced an approach in identifying introgressions from all possible archaic hominins in Eurasian genomes, without referring to archaic hominin sequences. We focused on mutations emerged in archaic hominins after their divergence from modern humans (denoted as archaic-specific mutations), and identified introgressive segments which showed significant enrichment of archaic-specific mutations over the rest of the genome. Furthermore, boundaries of introgressions were identified using a dynamic programming approach to partition whole genome into segments which contained different levels of archaic-specific mutations. We found that detected introgressions shared more archaic-specific mutations with Altai Neanderthal than they shared with Denisovan, and 60.3% of archaic hominin introgressions were from Neanderthals. Furthermore, we detected more introgressions from two unknown archaic hominins whom diverged with modern humans approximately 859 and 3,464 thousand years ago. The latter unknown archaic hominin contributed to the genomes of the common ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals. In total, archaic hominin introgressions comprised 2.4% of Eurasian genomes. Above results suggested a complex admixture history among hominins. The proposed approach could also facilitate admixture research across species.
Diversionary Comments under Blog Posts

There has been a recent swell of interest in the analysis of blog comments. However, much of the work focuses on detecting comment spam in the blogsphere. An important issue that has been neglected so far is the identification of diversionary comments. Diversionary comments are defined as comments that divert the topic from the original post. A possible purpose is to distract readers from the original topic and draw attention to a new topic. We categorize diversionary comments into five types based on our observations and propose an effective framework to identify and flag them. To the best of our knowledge, the problem of detecting diversionary comments has not been studied so far. We solve the problem in two different ways: (i) rank all comments in descending order of being diversionary and (ii) consider it as a classification problem. Our evaluation on 4,179 comments under 40 different blog posts from Digg and Reddit shows that the proposed method achieves the high mean average precision of 91.9% when the problem is considered as a ranking problem and 84.9% of F-measure as a classification problem. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the effectiveness of the method is stable under different parameter settings.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics Working Paper Series Finding Eldorado: Slavery and Long-run Development in Colombia Finding Eldorado: Slavery and Long-run Development In

Slavery has been a major institution of labor coercion throughout history. Colonial societies used slavery intensively across the Americas, and slavery remained prevalent in most countries after independence from the European powers. We investigate the impact of slavery on long-run development in Colombia. Our identification strategy compares municipalities that had gold mines during the 17th and 18th centuries to neighboring municipalities without gold mines. Gold mining was a major source of demand for slave labor during colonial times, and all colonial gold mines are now depleted. We find that the historical presence of slavery is associated with increased poverty and reduced school enrollment, vaccination coverage and public good provision. We also find that slavery is associated with higher contemporary land inequality.
The Lifetime of Ice on Main Belt Asteroids

We theoretically estimate the loss rate of buried ice from spherical bodies 2-3.3 AU from the Sun. The loss rate is explored as a function of about a dozen parameters. We introduce the concept of a “buried snow line,” where the loss of ice is sufficiently slow over the age of the solar system. For a dusty surface layer, ice can persist within the top few meters of the surface over billions of years, if the mean surface temperature is less than about 145 K. Variations in surface layer properties within a plausible range are unlikely to change this threshold temperature by more than 10 K. Longevity of ice in the shallow subsurface of asteroid 7968 Elst-Pizarro is plausible. Parameter regions for ice to survive over the age of the solar system exist for all of the main asteroid belt, but preferentially for large distances from the Sun and slowly rotating bodies with surfaces consisting of small particles, leading to low thermal conductivity and short molecular free paths. Rocky surfaces, in contrast to dusty surfaces, are rarely able to retain ice in the shallow subsurface.
KSHV-Encoded MicroRNAs: Lessons for Viral Cancer Pathogenesis and Emerging Concepts

The human genome contains microRNAs (miRNAs), small noncoding RNAs that orchestrate a number of physiologic processes through regulation of gene expression. Burgeoning evidence suggests that dysregulation of miRNAs may promote disease progression and cancer pathogenesis. Virus-encoded miRNAs, exhibiting unique molecular signatures and functions, have been increasingly recognized as contributors to viral cancer pathogenesis. A large segment of the existing knowledge in this area has been generated through characterization of miRNAs encoded by the human gamma-herpesviruses, including the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV). Recent studies focusing on KSHV miRNAs have led to a better understanding of viral miRNA expression in human tumors, the identification of novel pathologic check points regulated by viral miRNAs, and new insights for viral miRNA interactions with cellular (“human”) miRNAs. Elucidating the functional effects of inhibiting KSHV miRNAs has also provided a foundation for further translational efforts and consideration of clinical applications. This paper summarizes recent literature outlining mechanisms for KSHV miRNA regulation of cellular function and cancer-associated pathogenesis, as well as implications for interactions between KSHV and human miRNAs that may facilitate cancer progression. Finally, insights are offered for the clinical feasibility of targeting miRNAs as a therapeutic approach for viral cancers.
Covert robot-robot communication

As future human-robot teams are envisioned for a variety of application domains, researchers have begun to investigate how humans and robots can communicate effectively and naturally in the context of human-robot team tasks. While a growing body of work is focused on human-robot communication and human perceptions thereof, there is currently little work on human perceptions of robot-robot communication. Understanding how robots should communicate information to each other in the presence of human teammates is an important open question for human-robot teaming. In this paper, we present two human-robot interaction (HRI) experiments investigating the human perception of verbal and silent robot-robot communication as part of a human-robot team task. The results suggest that silent communication of task-dependent, human-understandable information among robots is perceived as creepy by cooperative, co-located human teammates. Hence, we propose that, absent specific evidence to the contrary, robots in cooperative human-robot team settings need to be sensitive to human expectations about overt communication, and we encourage future work to investigate possible ways to modulate such expectations.
Clinical evaluation of total intravenous anaesthesia using xylazine or dexmedetomidine with propofol in surgical management of canine patients

Aim: The aim was to evaluate and compare the clinico-physiological, hemodynamic and hematobiochemical effects in response to different total intravenous anaesthesia techniques using xylazine or dexmedetomidine with propofol in canine patients. Materials and Methods: Under a prospective randomized blinded clinical study, 12 apparently healthy adult dogs (14.27±3.2 kg) divided into two groups (n=6). Animals were administered with xylazine (0.5 mg/kg body weight IV) in X group or, dexmedetomidine (10 μg/kg body weight IV) in D group and propofol (as IV bolus till the induction and continuous IV infusion for maintenance). Clinical reflexes, physiological, hemodynamic parameters, were recorded at 5-min intervals. Blood was collected at zero, 30 and 60 min after initial injection for hematobiochemical evaluation. Statistical analysis was performed using analysis of variance, Duncan's multiple range tests, paired - t-test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way test. Results: Animals showed quicker attenuation of all clinical reflexes in group D. Induction doses of propofol were 3.17±0.21 and 2.72±0.15 mg/kg and rate of infusion of propofol for maintenance of anaesthesia were 0.33±0.02 mg/kg/min and 0.35±0.02 mg/kg/min respectively in group X and D. Recovery was quicker in group D. There were no significant statistical differences in physiological, hemodynamic and hematobiochemical parameters in both the groups. There were no adverse effects after recovery. Conclusion: Both anesthetic protocols provided satisfactory immobilization, but dexmedetomidine-propofol combination may be preferred owing to slightly better degree of basal anaesthesia, lesser doses of propofol required for induction and maintenance of anaesthesia along with a lesser degree of respiratory depression. However, there was no clear preference for either of the protocol, and both appear suitable for canines.
Defying the Odds: Growing Up & Growing Older with a Lifelong Physical Impairment (Cerebral Palsy)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of individuals who are aging with a lifelong and/or early-onset physical impairment. Method: A qualitative methodology was utilized consisting of narrative inquiry informed by the Life Course Perspective. The life course perspective is a dynamic approach that encompasses multiple theories including sociology, human development, and aging, highlighting how social, historical, and cultural contexts shape people’s lives. Narratives are storied ways of knowing and communicating that people use to organize events in their lives and make sense out of their experiences. Nine community-dwelling individuals (3 men; 6 women), aged 26-70, with mild to severe Cerebral Palsy were recruited using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling. Multiple (3-4), in-depth interviews were completed with each participant in order to co-construct their life stories. The data analysis was iterative. NVIVO 8 was used to organize the data, supporting a systematic caparison of emerging themes and categories, as well as the central plot that weaves the participants’ experiences together. Findings: “Defying the Odds” emerged as the central narrative that weaved together their experience of growing up and growing older. Their narrative is depicted through the trajectory of the
Tradeoffs in Corporate Governance: Evidence from Board Structures and Charter Provisions

We provide arguments and present evidence that corporate governance structures are composed of interrelated mechanisms, which are in turn endogenous responses to the costs and benefits firms face when they choose those mechanisms. Examining board structures and the use of corporate charter provisions in a sample of more than 2,300 firms over a four-year period, we find that firms cluster in their use of governance mechanisms. In particular, the set of charter provisions that firms use, as measured by the Gomperset al.(2003)GIndex, is associated with board structure, with the laws of the state in which the firm is incorporated, and with firm and industry characteristics. We also find that some governance structures appear to serve as substitutes. Specifically, firms that have powerful boards (as measured by board independence) also have the greatest number of charter provisions, suggesting that the market for corporate control is less effective as a monitoring mechanism for these firms. In contrast, firms that have less powerful boards tend to have few charter provisions, suggesting that the market for corporate control plays a greater monitoring role at such firms. To address potential endogeneity issues, we employ three-stage least squares analysis to estimate these relationships within a system of equations. Our results from this analysis are consistent with the hypothesis that powerful boards serve as a substitute for the market for corporate control. Finally, our findings suggest that causality runs from the board to the choice of charter provisions, but not vice versa.
Static routing in symmetric real-time network-on-chips

With the rising number of cores on a single chip the question on how to organize the communication among those cores becomes more and more relevant. A common solution is to use a network-on-chip (NoC) that provides communication bandwidth, routing, and arbitration among the cores. The use of NoCs in real-time systems is problematic, since the shared network and all cores connected to it have to be analyzed to derive time bounds of real-time tasks. We propose to use a statically scheduled, time-division-multiplexed NoC design that allows a decoupled analysis of individual real-time tasks. Our network provides virtual circuits between all cores. These virtual circuits are implemented by delivering messages periodically on a static, fixed routing schedule. Since the routing does not change, it can be pre-computed offline. This work focuses on the computation of routing schedules for symmetric NoC topologies, e.g., torus and hyper-cube. Due to the symmetry, the all-to-all communication can be modeled via simplified communication patterns that are concurrently processed by all routers. The scheduling problem is solved by a heuristic that tries to maximize the overlap of active patterns. Our experiments show that, for larger networks, our heuristic yields schedule lengths that are only 15% to 20% longer than theoretical lower bounds.
Stability analysis of Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems via LMI: methodologies based on a new fuzzy Lyapunov function

Stability analysis of TS fuzzy systems can be much improved by resorting to fuzzy Lyapunov functions, since they are parameterized by membership functions and can better characterize the time-varying feature of these systems by means of the information regarding the rst time-derivative of the membership functions. In this paper an enhanced fuzzy Lyapunov function is used to develop stability conditions that evaluate also the second time-derivative of membership functions, improving the time-varying characterization of TS systems. By using dieren t strategies to consider the information regarding such derivatives and employing some numerical tools that decouple system from Lyapunov function matrices new LMI tests are developed. Numerical examples illustrate the eectiv eness of those methodologies.
Dietary patterns based on carbohydrate nutrition are associated with the risk for diabetes and dyslipidemia

Several studies have been conducted on dietary patterns based on carbohydrate nutrition in Asian populations. We examined the cross-sectional associations in dietary patterns based on carbohydrate nutrition, including the glycemic index (GI) with dyslipidemia and diabetes among the Korean adult population. We analyzed 9,725 subjects (3,795 men and 5,930 women, ≥ 20 years) from the Fourth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Dietary information was collected using single 24-hour recall. Reduced rank regression was used to derive dietary patterns from 22 food groups as predictor variables and four dietary factors related to the quantity and quality of carbohydrates as response variables. Two dietary patterns were identified: 1) the balanced pattern was characterized by high intake of various kinds of foods including white rice, and 2) the rice-oriented pattern was characterized by a high intake of white rice but low intake of vegetables, fruits, meat, and dairy products. Both patterns had considerable amounts of total carbohydrate, but GI values differed. The rice-oriented pattern was positively associated with hypertriglyceridemia in men and low high density lipoprotein-cholesterol in both men and women. The balanced pattern had no overall significant association with the prevalence of dyslipidemia or diabetes, however, men with energy intake above the median showed a reduced prevalence of diabetes across quintiles of balanced pattern scores. The results show that dietary patterns based on carbohydrate nutrition are associated with prevalence of dyslipidemia and diabetes in the Korean adult population.
Concurrency control for database systems

The concurrency control is that portion of a database system that is concerned with deciding what actions should be taken in response to requests by the individual application programs to read and write into the database. We are interested in those database systems in which concurrency control is performed at the system level and is invisible to individual uS'ers. Individual application programs do not lock and unlock database entities they access, and in fact each application program is written as if it were the only program running on the system.
Multi-instrument observations of the ionospheric counterpart of a bursty bulk flow in the near-Earth plasma sheet

Abstract. On 07 September 2001 the Cluster spacecraft observed a "bursty bulk flow" event in the near-Earth central plasma sheet. This paper presents a detailed study of the coincident ground-based observations and attempts to place them within a simple physical framework. The event in question occurs at ~22:30 UT, some 10min after a southward turning of the IMF. IMAGE and SAMNET magnetometer measurements of the ground magnetic field reveal perturbations of a few tens of nT and small amplitude Pi2 pulsations. CUTLASS radar observations of ionospheric plasma convection show enhanced flows out of the polar cap near midnight, accompanied by an elevated transpolar voltage. Optical data from the IMAGE satellite also show that there is a transient, localised ~1 kR brightening in the UV aurora. These observations are consistent with the earthward transport of plasma in the tail, but also indicate the absence of a typical "large-scale" substorm current wedge. An analysis of the field-aligned current system implied by the radar measurements does suggest the existence of a small-scale current "wedgelet", but one which lacks the global scale and high conductivities observed during substorm expansions. Key words. Ionosphere (auroral ionosphere; ionospheremagnetosphere interactions; plasma convection)
Artificial Bee Colony ( ABC ) , Harmony Search and Bees Algorithms on Numerical Optimization

In this paper, performances of basic Artificial Bee Colony, Harmony Search and Bees algorithms and Improved Bees algorithm were compared on unimodal and multimodal well-known benchmark problems. Effect of problem dimensionality on the performance of the algorithms was investigated and the algorithms were compared to each other in terms of the number of control parameters to be tuned.
Simplicity of ultragraph algebras

In this paper we analyze the structure of C*-algebras associated to ultragraphs, which are generalizations of directed graphs. We characterize the simple ultragraph algebras as well as deduce necessary and sufficient conditions for an ultragraph algebra to be purely infinite and to be AF. Using these techniques we also produce an example of an ultragraph algebra that is neither a graph algebra nor an Exel-Laca algebra. We conclude by proving that the C*-algebras of ultragraphs with no sinks are Cuntz-Pimsner algebras.