Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary Field Testing: Urban Heat Island Impacts and Pervious Concrete

This paper will discuss how the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is a phenomenon where the air temperature surrounding an urban, or metropolitan area, is significantly higher than surrounding areas. This negatively impacts energy use, human comfort, plant growth and water usage among other things. There are many factors contributing to UHI, but the foci of this discussion are the differences in thermal properties of pavement construction materials. Significant volumes of construction materials such as concrete, asphalt and steel have high thermal bulk properties, in addition to having different surface radiation properties. Simply put, these materials can absorb, transfer and store more energy than rural landscapes. Due to its open pore structure, pervious concrete may offer insulation benefits over normal paving materials in this regard. Pervious concrete may help reduce the local effects of UHI in several ways, two of which are studied here. First, pervious concrete has a relatively light color with a higher solar reflectance, or albedo, than darker pavements such as asphalt, although it may have a darker color or lower albedo due to mix characteristics and its uneven surface when compared to some other concretes. Secondly, the open pore structure means pervious concrete may be less efficient at storing and transferring heat than other typical paving materials. Therefore, pervious concrete may transfer less heat to the ground below than many paving materials. This research focuses on preliminary, initial investigations into the albedo and thermal conductivity properties of pervious concrete relative to standard concrete and asphalt pavement. It was found that the surface temperatures of pervious concrete as measured with a thermal gun were higher than similar traditional concrete pavement. It was also found that pervious concrete with its open pore structure does indeed offer thermal insulation benefits with respect to heat transfer to the ground below.
Strategyproof Matching with Minimum Quotas

We study matching markets in which institutions may have minimum and maximum quotas. Minimum quotas are important in many settings, such as hospital residency matching, military cadet matching, and school choice, but current mechanisms are unable to accommodate them, leading to the use of ad hoc solutions. We introduce two new classes of strategyproof mechanisms that allow for minimum quotas as an explicit input and show that our mechanisms improve welfare relative to existing approaches. Because minimum quotas cause a theoretical incompatibility between standard fairness and nonwastefulness properties, we introduce new second-best axioms and show that they are satisfied by our mechanisms. Last, we use simulations to quantify (1) the magnitude of the potential efficiency gains from our mechanisms and (2) how far the resulting assignments are from the first-best definitions of fairness and nonwastefulness. Combining both the theoretical and simulation results, we argue that our mechanisms will improve the performance of matching markets with minimum quota constraints in practice.
Coronary Artery Stents: II. Perioperative Considerations and Management

The management of patients with coronary artery stents during the perioperative period is one of the most important patient safety issues clinicians confront. Perioperative stent thrombosis is a life-threatening complication for patients with either bare-metal or drug-eluting stents. Noncardiac surgery appears to increase the risk of stent thrombosis, myocardial infarction, and death, particularly when patients undergo surgery early after stent implantation. The incidence of complications is further increased when dual-antiplatelet therapy is discontinued preoperatively. It is generally agreed that aspirin must be continued throughout the perioperative period, except in circumstances when the risk of bleeding significantly outweighs the benefit of continued anticoagulation, such as procedures performed in a closed space. We present considerations for regional anesthesia, as well as postoperative recommendations as the occurrence of perioperative stent thrombosis appears to be greatest during this period. Immediate percutaneous coronary intervention is the definitive treatment for perioperative stent thrombosis, and 24-h access to an interventional cardiology suite should be readily available. Algorithms for perioperative management of patients with bare-metal and drug-eluting stents are proposed.
Bioactive Glass: A Material for the Future

Bioactive glasses are novel dental materials that are different from conventional glasses and are used in dentistry. Bioactive glasses are composed of calcium and phosphate which are present in a proportion that is similar to the bone hydroxyapatite. These glasses bond to the tissue and are biocompatible. They have a wide range of medical and dental applications and are currently used as bone grafts, scaffolds and coating material for dental implants. This article reviews various properties of bioactive glasses and their applications and also reviews the changes that can be made in their composition according to a desired application.
What is this place? Inferring place categories through user patterns identification in geo-tagged tweets

Online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have started allowing users to tag their posts with geographical coordinates collected through the GPS interface of users smartphones. While this information is quite useful and already indicative of user behavior, it also lacks some semantics about the type of place the user is (e.g., restaurant, museum, school) which would allow a better understanding of users' patterns. While some location based online social network services (e.g., Foursquare) allow users to tag the places they visit, this is not an automated process but one which requires the user help. In this paper we exploit the dynamics of human activity to associate categories to GPS coordinates of social network posts. We have collected geo-tagged tweets of a large city through Twitter. A supervised learning framework takes the tweets spatial-temporal features and determines human dynamics which we use to infer the place category. Our results over the data show that the prediction framework is able to accurately identify if a place is of a certain category given its user activity patterns. The average accuracy is about 70%, reaching the highest accuracy for work (90%) and educational places (80%). Moreover the framework identifies the category of a place, with an accuracy up to 66%, finding out where people eat and drink, go for entertainment, or work/study.
XFEM for the evaluation of elastic properties of CNT-based 3-D full five-directional braided composites

In the present work, a 3-D unit cell model is proposed to predict the elastic behavior of 3-D full five-directional braided composites. The model is analyzed by extended finite element method. An effective medium approximation scheme is used to evaluate the elastic properties of the composite. In the proposed unit cell model, the interface between the fiber and matrix is modeled by PU enrichment. The effects of fiber volume fraction and interior angle of braiding yarn on the elastic properties are analyzed in detail. To further enhance the elastic properties, the braided composite is enforced by randomly distributed carbon nanotubes (CNTs). A new method is proposed to evaluate the effect of CNTs on the effective properties of the composite. The present simulations show that the addition of 3% CNTs increases the effective elastic properties of 3-D braided composite nearly by 100%.
Financial Socialization of First-year College Students: the Roles of Parents, Work, and Education

This cross-sectional study tests a conceptual financial socialization process model, specifying four-levels that connect anticipatory socialization during adolescence to young adults' current financial learning, to their financial attitudes, and to their financial behavior. A total of 2,098 first-year college students (61.9% females) participated in the survey, representing a diverse ethnic group (32.6% minority participation: Hispanic 14.9%, Asian/ Asian American 9%, Black 3.4%, Native American 1.8% and other 3.5%). Structural equation modeling indicated that parents, work, and high school financial education during adolescence predicted young adults' current financial learning, attitude and behavior, with the role played by parents substantially greater than the role played by work experience and high school financial education combined. Data also supported the proposed hierarchical financial socialization four-level model, indicating that early financial socialization is related to financial learning, which in turn is related to financial attitudes and subsequently to financial behavior. The study presents a discussion of how the theories of consumer socialization and planned behavior were combined effectively to depict the financial development of young adults. Several practical implications are also provided for parents, educators and students.
Uniform document interactions using document properties

Most document storage takes place through computer file systems, and most interaction with documents is performed in terms of the structure and facilities that those filesystems provide. But documents are not files. Our goal is to provide an infrastructure for managing documents, not files. We propose a uniform mechanism for managing, organising, structuring, searching and operating on document collections, based on document properties as a uniform basis for interaction. Document properties express high-level features of documents that are meaningful to users and usable by systems. We describe an infrastructure we have developed for property-based document management, and show a series of applications building on this approach.
Partitioning the wireless environment for determining radio coverage and traffic distribution with user feedback

To achieve high data rates and seamless coverage, radio access networks continue to increase in complexity, and the expenditure on operational tasks continues to rise to unprecedented levels. The development of Long Term Evolution (LTE) with Self-organizing network (SON) functions is being considered as an effective way to tackle these challenges. The paper describes an approach to model the coverage areas so that resource allocation algorithms can benefit from traffic distribution and coverage information. The main problem considered in this paper is the partitioning of the wireless environment into regions that allow for accurate modelling of the propagation environment and prediction of the traffic distribution. The analysis is based on models constructed from historical data and monitoring of the received signal strengths from the mobile stations (MSs). The mechanism is based on the similarity of perceived signals from MSs. The performance is evaluated using data generated from a network planning tool for a real environment.
The Role of Oxidative Stress and Autophagy in Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is a multifactorial, multistep disorder of large- and medium-sized arteries involving, in addition to age, gender and menopausal status, a complex interplay between lifestyle and genetic risk factors. Atherosclerosis usually begins with the diffusion and retention of atherogenic lipoproteins into the subendothelial space of the artery wall where they become oxidized by local enzymes and accumulate, leading to the formation of a cushion called atheroma or atheromatous or fibrofatty plaque, composed of a mixture of macrophages, lymphocytes, smooth muscle cells (SMCs), cholesterol cleft, necrotic debris, and lipid-laden foam cells. The pathogenesis of atherosclerosis still remains incompletely understood but emerging evidence suggests that it may involve multiple cellular events, including endothelial cell (EC) dysfunction, inflammation, proliferation of vascular SMCs, matrix (ECM) alteration, and neovascularization. Actually, a growing body of evidence indicates that autophagy along with the chronic and acute overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is integral to the development and progression of the disease and may represent fruitful avenues for biological investigation and for the identification of new therapeutic targets. In this review, we give an overview of ROS and autophagy in atherosclerosis as background to understand their potential role in this vascular disease.
No Reliable Association between Runs of Homozygosity and Schizophrenia in a Well-Powered Replication Study

It is well known that inbreeding increases the risk of recessive monogenic diseases, but it is less certain whether it contributes to the etiology of complex diseases such as schizophrenia. One way to estimate the effects of inbreeding is to examine the association between disease diagnosis and genome-wide autozygosity estimated using runs of homozygosity (ROH) in genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism arrays. Using data for schizophrenia from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (n = 21,868), Keller et al. (2012) estimated that the odds of developing schizophrenia increased by approximately 17% for every additional percent of the genome that is autozygous (β = 16.1, CI(β) = [6.93, 25.7], Z = 3.44, p = 0.0006). Here we describe replication results from 22 independent schizophrenia case-control datasets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (n = 39,830). Using the same ROH calling thresholds and procedures as Keller et al. (2012), we were unable to replicate the significant association between ROH burden and schizophrenia in the independent PGC phase II data, although the effect was in the predicted direction, and the combined (original + replication) dataset yielded an attenuated but significant relationship between Froh and schizophrenia (β = 4.86,CI(β) = [0.90,8.83],Z = 2.40,p = 0.02). Since Keller et al. (2012), several studies reported inconsistent association of ROH burden with complex traits, particularly in case-control data. These conflicting results might suggest that the effects of autozygosity are confounded by various factors, such as socioeconomic status, education, urbanicity, and religiosity, which may be associated with both real inbreeding and the outcome measures of interest.
The DIANA-mirExTra Web Server: From Gene Expression Data to MicroRNA Function

Background High-throughput gene expression experiments are widely used to identify the role of genes involved in biological conditions of interest. MicroRNAs (miRNA) are regulatory molecules that have been functionally associated with several developmental programs and their deregulation with diverse diseases including cancer. Methodology/Principal Findings Although miRNA expression levels may not be routinely measured in high-throughput experiments, a possible involvement of miRNAs in the deregulation of gene expression can be computationally predicted and quantified through analysis of overrepresented motifs in the deregulated genes 3′ untranslated region (3′UTR) sequences. Here, we introduce a user-friendly web-server, DIANA-mirExTra (www.microrna.gr/mirextra) that allows the comparison of frequencies of miRNA associated motifs between sets of genes that can lead to the identification of miRNAs responsible for the deregulation of large numbers of genes. To this end, we have investigated different approaches and measures, and have practically implemented them on experimental data. Conclusions/Significance On several datasets of miRNA overexpression and repression experiments, our proposed approaches have successfully identified the deregulated miRNA. Beyond the prediction of miRNAs responsible for the deregulation of transcripts, the web-server provides extensive links to DIANA-mirPath, a functional analysis tool incorporating miRNA targets in biological pathways. Additionally, in case information about miRNA expression changes is provided, the results can be filtered to display the analysis for miRNAs of interest only.
Diversifying Image search results

Image re-ranking is the process which reorders the original text based search results by identifying the intrinsic relationship between the images and query term to generate a new order list which would better meet the user needs. The Image search result diversification aims at providing a set of results which covers a wide range topics related to the user query. An efficient information retrieval system should return relevant as well as diversified results to the user. In real world applications, the images returned for a certain query are naturally in hierarchical organization, rather than a simple parallel relation. By identifying all the topics that are related for the given query and returning the images from all these topics can achieve the diversity in the top ranked images from the search engine. This paper propose an approach which identifies all the related terms for the given user query term by the Tag Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency algorithm. In addition, the Google knowledge graph Application Programming Interface is also used to identify the related terms for a given query. The images obtained for those related terms are refined further to obtain only the relevant images. Then the images are selected by means of Hierarchical Topic Aware Re-Ranking model for returning the diverse image search results to the user. Such a diversified result can improve the efficiency of the web image search engines.
GSK-3: Functional Insights from Cell Biology and Animal Models

Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) is a widely expressed and highly conserved serine/threonine protein kinase encoded in mammals by two genes that generate two related proteins: GSK-3α and GSK-3β. GSK-3 is active in cells under resting conditions and is primarily regulated through inhibition or diversion of its activity. While GSK-3 is one of the few protein kinases that can be inactivated by phosphorylation, the mechanisms of GSK-3 regulation are more varied and not fully understood. Precise control appears to be achieved by a combination of phosphorylation, localization, and sequestration by a number of GSK-3-binding proteins. GSK-3 lies downstream of several major signaling pathways including the phosphatidylinositol 3′ kinase pathway, the Wnt pathway, Hedgehog signaling and Notch. Specific pools of GSK-3, which differ in intracellular localization, binding partner affinity, and relative amount are differentially sensitized to several distinct signaling pathways and these sequestration mechanisms contribute to pathway insulation and signal specificity. Dysregulation of signaling pathways involving GSK-3 is associated with the pathogenesis of numerous neurological and psychiatric disorders and there are data suggesting GSK-3 isoform-selective roles in several of these. Here, we review the current knowledge of GSK-3 regulation and targets and discuss the various animal models that have been employed to dissect the functions of GSK-3 in brain development and function through the use of conventional or conditional knockout mice as well as transgenic mice. These studies have revealed fundamental roles for these protein kinases in memory, behavior, and neuronal fate determination and provide insights into possible therapeutic interventions.
Genome-Wide Survey of Cold Stress Regulated Alternative Splicing in Arabidopsis thaliana with Tiling Microarray

Alternative splicing plays a major role in expanding the potential informational content of eukaryotic genomes. It is an important post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism that can increase protein diversity and affect mRNA stability. Alternative splicing is often regulated in a tissue-specific and stress-responsive manner. Cold stress, which adversely affects plant growth and development, regulates the transcription and splicing of plant splicing factors. This can affect the pre-mRNA processing of many genes. To identify cold regulated alternative splicing we applied Affymetrix Arabidopsis tiling arrays to survey the transcriptome under cold treatment conditions. A novel algorithm was used for detection of statistically relevant changes in intron expression within a transcript between control and cold growth conditions. A reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of a number of randomly selected genes confirmed the changes in splicing patterns under cold stress predicted by tiling array. Our analysis revealed new types of cold responsive genes. While their expression level remains relatively unchanged under cold stress their splicing pattern shows detectable changes in the relative abundance of isoforms. The majority of cold regulated alternative splicing introduced a premature termination codon (PTC) into the transcripts creating potential targets for degradation by the nonsense mediated mRNA decay (NMD) process. A number of these genes were analyzed in NMD-defective mutants by RT-PCR and shown to evade NMD. This may result in new and truncated proteins with altered functions or dominant negative effects. The results indicate that cold affects both quantitative and qualitative aspects of gene expression.
Backscatter Compensated Photometric Stereo with 3 Sources

Photometric stereo offers the possibility of object shape reconstruction via reasoning about the amount of light reflected from oriented surfaces. However, in murky media such as sea water, the illuminating light interacts with the medium and some of it is backscattered towards the camera. Due to this additive light component, the standard Photometric Stereo equations lead to poor quality shape estimation. Previous authors have attempted to reformulate the approach but have either neglected backscatter entirely or disregarded its non-uniformity on the sensor when camera and lights are close to each other. We show that by compensating effectively for the backscatter component, a linear formulation of Photometric Stereo is allowed which recovers an accurate normal map using only 3 lights. Our backscatter compensation method for point-sources can be used for estimating the uneven backscatter directly from single images without any prior knowledge about the characteristics of the medium or the scene. We compare our method with previous approaches through extensive experimental results, where a variety of objects are imaged in a big water tank whose turbidity is systematically increased, and show reconstruction quality which degrades little relative to clean water results even with a very significant scattering level.
ReConMUC: adaptable consistency requirements for efficient large-scale multi-user chat

Multi-user chat (MUC) applications raise serious challenges to developers concerning scalability and efficient use of network bandwidth, due to a large number of users exchanging lots of messages in real-time. We propose a new approach to MUC message propagation based on an adaptable consistency model bounded by three metrics: Filter, Time and Volume. In this model, the server propagates some messages as soon as possible while others are postponed until certain conditions are met, according to each client consistency requirements. These requirements can change during the session lifetime, constantly adapting to each client's current context. We developed a prototype called ReConMUC (Relaxed Consistency MUC) as an extension to a well-known MUC protocol, which, by attaching a special component to the server, filters messages before they are broadcast, according to client consistency requirements. The performance results obtained show that ReConMUC effectively reduces the server outbound bandwidth, without significant increase in memory and CPU usage, thus improving scalability.