Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Investigation of Students' Perceptions of Learning Benefits of Weblogs in an East Asian Context: A Rasch Analysis

In the 1980s we witnessed the dawning of the Information Age. Today, the use of information technology has become an integral part of our lives. Education is no exception. With the introduction of Web 2.0 tools such as weblogs, students are presented a new platform for interaction and exchanging ideas. A review of the literature however reveals few empirical studies examining the relationship of the use of weblogs and student learning. Furthermore, despite the growing interest in research on blogging, researchers continue to overlook cultural variations when enumerating students’ learning benefits through blogging. As such, the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that are of specific benefits of weblogs in student learning in an East Asian context. To determine this, principal component factor analysis was performed using standardized residuals rather than the non-linear raw scores. The findings revealed four factors, namely, efficiency, deliberation, de-personalization, and collaboration that explained students’ perceptions of the learning benefits of blogging. (159 words)
REDEN: Named Entity Linking in Digital Literary Editions Using Linked Data Sets

This paper proposes a graph-based Named Entity Linking (NEL) algorithm named REDEN for the disambiguation of authors' names in French literary criticism texts and scientific essays from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The algorithm is described and evaluated according to the two phases of NEL as reported in current state of the art, namely, candidate retrieval and candidate selection. REDEN leverages knowledge from different Linked Data sources in order to select candidates for each author mention, subsequently crawls data from other Linked Data sets using equivalence links (e.g., owl:sameAs), and, finally, fuses graphs of homologous individuals into a non-redundant graph well-suited for graph centrality calculation; the resulting graph is used for choosing the best referent. The REDEN algorithm is distributed in open-source and follows current standards in digital editions (TEI) and semantic Web (RDF). Its integration into an editorial workflow of digital editions in Digital humanities and cultural heritage projects is entirely plausible. Experiments are conducted along with the corresponding error analysis in order to test our approach and to help us to study the weaknesses and strengths of our algorithm, thereby to further improvements of REDEN.
Liaison of monomial ideals

We give a simple algorithm to decide whether a monomial ideal of finite colength in a polynomial ring is licci, that is, in the linkage class of a complete intersection. The algorithm proves that whether or not such an ideal is licci does not depend on whether we restrict the linkage by allowing only monomial regular sequences, or homogeneous regular sequences, or arbitrary regular sequences. We apply our results on monomial ideals to compare when an ideal is licci versus when its initial ideal in some term order is licci. We also apply an idea of Migliore and Nagel to prove that monomial ideals of finite colength are always glicci, that is, in the Gorenstein linkage class of a complete intersection. However, our proof requires the use of non‐homogeneous Gorenstein links.
Effect of Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy on dyspeptic symptoms in primary care.

OBJECTIVE The aim was to explore the effect of eradication therapy on dyspeptic symptoms in patients with known peptic ulcer disease (PUD). METHOD A total of 164 known dyspeptics and 147 non-dyspeptic attenders at six UK general practices were recruited. The Helisal Rapid Blood test was performed in the practices and eradication therapy left to the preference of the general practitioner. Patients were followed prospectively by a Likert scaled symptom questionnaire and record review. The symptom questionnaire distinguished between patients known to have dyspepsia and those not. RESULTS There was a statistically significant decrease in dyspeptic symptoms in patients with known PUD who received eradication therapy (n = 43, Z = -2.63, P = 0.009). CONCLUSIONS Eradication of Helicobacter pylori in primary care can lead to a reduction in consumption of H2 receptor antagonists and hence cost savings. This study demonstrates that dyspeptic symptoms also decrease. The questionnaire could be used in further studies to evaluate the effect of management on dyspeptic symptoms in the primary care setting.
Bacterial translocation in acute liver injury induced by D‐ galactosamine

Acute liver injury is associated with a high rate of infectious and septic complications. Most of these infections are produced by gram negative enteric bacteria. We evaluated bacterial translocation, intestinal permeability, blood flow, portal pressure, and intestinal microflora after induction of liver injury and 70% liver resection in the rat. The rate of translocation to both portal and arterial blood was 100% at 24 hours and 50% at 48 hours after liver resection compared with 83% to portal vein and 50% to aortic blood at both time points after acute liver injury. Translocation to intraabdominal organs (liver, spleen, and mesenteric lymph nodes) was 100% in both groups at both 24 and 48 hours. The rate of translocation increased after liver injury at 48 hours with progression of the liver injury but was decreased in the 70% liver resection group with improvement of liver function. “Total aerobic” and “total anaerobic” bacterial counts in small intestine and cecum were not affected. Pulmonary, distal small intestine, and cecal blood flow were decreased in both groups, whereas blood flow in the proximal small intestine was unaffected. Portal pressure and flow were increased after 70% liver resection, but they were decreased in acute liver injury. After acute liver injury, permeability of both distal small intestine and cecum increased, but after liver resection only cecal permeability increased. The results of this experiment show that bacterial translocation occurs in experimental acute liver injury and that its dynamic, pattern and fate are different from that observed after liver resection, which is a reversible surgical model of liver insufficiency.
The human gut microbiome: are we our enterotypes?

Blood groups, finger prints, iris scans and DNA bar codes are several ways to distinguish or identify individual humans. According to Arumugam and colleagues (2011) we can now also be distinguished by the microbial communities in our faeces, our ‘enterotypes’. The human gut is one of the most densely populated ecosystems known, and although this ecosystem contains members of the three domains of life – bacteria, archaea and eucarya (Finegold et al., 1983) – it is dominated by bacteria. They are essential in digesting the food we eat and in keeping us healthy by stimulating our immune system and fighting off pathogenic bacteria. It is estimated that 1013–1014 microbes inhabit our gastrointestinal tract (GIT), with the greatest number residing in the distal gut, where they synthesize essential vitamins and process otherwise indigestible components of our diet such as plant polysaccharides (Backhed et al., 2005). Early studies used 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) analysis to type and enumerate the distal gut and faecal microbiota. More than 90% of the bacterial phylotypes present in the intestinal microbiota in healthy humans are members of only three bacterial divisions: the Bacteroidetes, the Firmicutes and the Actinobacteria (Zoetendal et al., 2006). Nevertheless, each healthy adult's gut appears to have a unique and relatively stable microbiota (Zoetendal et al., 1998; Turnbaugh et al., 2007), which is a reflection of the numerous different phylogenetic clusters among the Firmicutes, Clostridium clusters IV, IX and XIVa, including the predominant genera Clostridium, Eubacterium, Roseburia and Ruminococcus. Furthermore, the Actinobacteria that encompass mainly the genera Bifidobacterium and Atopobium also represent important members of the gut microbial community (Harmsen et al., 2002; Turroni et al., 2008). Notably, recent estimates of the diversity of the human gut microbial ecosystem indicate it may encompass more than 1000 species and a multitude of strains (Backhed et al., 2005; Blaut and Clavel, 2007; Rajilic‐Stojanovic et al., 2007). Microbiota composition studies in humans have discovered that aberrations in the microbiome composition is present in obese individuals (Ley et al., 2006; Turnbaugh et al., 2009) as well as in individuals with a variety of other diseases (Zoetendal et al., 2008). Since the largest part (∼80%) of gut microbes remains uncultured, metagenomics analysis has become fashionable in the past 5 years to estimate the types, relative abundance and genome content of microbes in various parts of the GIT. The first metagenomics analysis from just two faecal samples (Gill et al., 2006) led to early insight into enrichment of genes encoding specific metabolic pathways, including metabolism associated with glycans, amino acids and xenobiotics, but also methanogenesis and biosynthesis of vitamins and isoprenoids. However, this early study provided only a very fragmented view due to limitations in sample size, sequencing technology, number of bases sequenced and availability of suitable reference genomes of gut inhabitants.
Outcomes among living liver donors.

ulosis to cut down on the consumption of fiber-containing foods. In patients with diverticulosis, the evidence suggests that a high-fiber diet is beneficial. The important and provocative paper by Peery et al calls into question the long-standing but poorly proven fiber theory of the pathogenesis of diverticulosis. In this study, high, not low, fiber intake was associated with an increased risk of diverticulosis in a dose-dependent fashion and the association was stronger in individuals with more marked disease. These results open the door for new avenues of thought regarding the pathogenesis of and risk factors for this common yet understudied disease. A future study of individuals with detailed data on diet and gastrointestinal symptoms before the diagnosis of diverticulosis, or ideally before its onset, would be welcomed to confirm these findings. Given the other health benefits of ietary fiber, further evidence is needed before altering ditary recommendations in patients without diverticulosis.
The Market Value of Ingress Rights for White-Tailed Deer Hunting in Texas

Abstract The lease hunting system in Texas is described and discussed. Results of a hunter survey are reported and the value of ingress rights for white-tailed deer hunting in Texas is estimated. Results suggest that these rights are highly valuable and that services and facilities provided generally do not enhance the value of the hunting experience as much as access to additional game species on adequately large parcels of land.
Restriction of rapid eye movement sleep during adolescence increases energy gain and metabolic efficiency in young adult rats

What is the central question of this study? Sleep curtailment in infancy and adolescence may lead to long‐term risk for obesity, but the mechanisms involved have not yet been determined. This study examined the immediate and long‐term metabolic effects produced by sleep restriction in young rats. What is the main finding and its importance? Prolonged sleep restriction reduced weight gain (body fat stores) in young animals. After prolonged recovery, sleep‐restricted rats tended to save more energy and to store more fat, possibly owing to increased gross food efficiency. This could be the first step to understand this association.
VM Capacity-Aware Scheduling within Budget Constraints in IaaS Clouds

Recently, cloud computing has drawn significant attention from both industry and academia, bringing unprecedented changes to computing and information technology. The infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model offers new abilities such as the elastic provisioning and relinquishing of computing resources in response to workload fluctuations. However, because the demand for resources dynamically changes over time, the provisioning of resources in a way that a given budget is efficiently utilized while maintaining a sufficing performance remains a key challenge. This paper addresses the problem of task scheduling and resource provisioning for a set of tasks running on IaaS clouds; it presents novel provisioning and scheduling algorithms capable of executing tasks within a given budget, while minimizing the slowdown due to the budget constraint. Our simulation study demonstrates a substantial reduction up to 70% in the overall task slowdown rate by the proposed algorithms.
Personalized flight recommendations via paired choice modeling

Personalized flight recommendation is useful when a traveler wants to find the most suitable flight ticket efficiently. It is hard to learn latent factors behind personal choices directly from users' preferred flight tickets whose features change over time, which leads to the ineffectiveness of traditional recommendation approaches. Therefore, we propose a personalized flight ticket recommendation approach based on paired choice modeling. In this approach, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize a user's choice utility over flight tickets through a paired-choice analysis of users' historical orders. The experiments conducted on a real world dataset show that our approach outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.
Signal from noise?

In this article, some of the history of rapidly spreading infectious disease pandemics were reviewed as well as the individual technologies currently under development that were presented at the IFMBE meeting. A summary of current strategies to integrate these independent solutions and strategies for future development was presented . Ongoing efforts to address the challenges of detecting signals, developing methods for processing information, and establishing integrated frameworks for effective dissemination of information to manage and combat a global pandemic were also presented.
Flow in the western Mediterranean shallow mantle: Insights from xenoliths in Pliocene alkali basalts from SE Iberia (eastern Betics, Spain)

Mantle xenoliths in Pliocene alkali basalts of the eastern Betics (SE Iberia, Spain) are spinel ± plagioclase lherzolite, with minor harzburgite and wehrlite, displaying porphyroclastic or equigranular textures. Equigranular peridotites have olivine crystal preferred orientation (CPO) patterns similar to those of porphyroclastic xenoliths but slightly more dispersed. Olivine CPO shows [100]‐fiber patterns characterized by strong alignment of [100]‐axes subparallel to the stretching lineation and a girdle distribution of [010]‐axes normal to it. This pattern is consistent with simple shear or transtensional deformation accommodated by dislocation creep. One xenolith provides evidence for synkinematic reactive percolation of subduction‐related Si‐rich melts/fluids that resulted in oriented crystallization of orthopyroxene. Despite a seemingly undeformed microstructure, the CPO in orthopyroxenite veins in composite xenoliths is identical to those of pyroxenes in the host peridotite, suggesting late‐kinematic crystallization. Based on these observations, we propose that the annealing producing the equigranular microstructures was triggered by melt percolation in the shallow subcontinental lithospheric mantle coeval to the late Neogene formation of veins in composite xenoliths. Calculated seismic properties are characterized by fast propagation of P waves and polarization of fast S waves parallel to olivine [100]‐axis (stretching lineation). These data are compatible with present‐day seismic anisotropy observations in SE Iberia if the foliations in the lithospheric mantle are steeply dipping and lineations are subhorizontal with ENE strike, implying dominantly horizontal mantle flow in the ENE‐WSW direction within vertical planes, that is, subparallel to the paleo‐Iberian margin. The measured anisotropy could thus reflect a lithospheric fabric due to strike‐slip deformation in the late Miocene in the context of WSW tearing of the subducted south Iberian margin lithosphere.
Machine Tools Selection Technology for Networked Manufacturing

Networked manufacturing is cooperative manufacturing on the basis of various hierarchy resources sharing in its nature, and it takes the form of agile virtual enterprise (AVE). It's important to get the optimum Cooperative enterprise scheme by analyzing, arranging and evaluating manufacturing capability of candidate enterprise for cooperative manufacturing. The level of machine tools is main factor of enterprise manufacturing capability. The paper analyzes the art of machine tools selection, and introduces the advantage of machine tools selection based on grey relation theory and AHP method. Firstly, machine tools selection index system is discussed according to cost, time and quality. Secondly, machine tools multi-hierarchy grey selection model is put forward for selection evaluation system. Lastly, the paper discusses machine tools selection problem by giving an example of working procedure about semi-finishing turning flank groove for one aeroplane engineer front casket.
Alterations in shoulder kinematics and associated muscle activity in people with symptoms of shoulder impingement.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Treatment of patients with impingement symptoms commonly includes exercises intended to restore "normal" movement patterns. Evidence that indicates the existence of abnormal patterns in people with shoulder pain is limited. The purpose of this investigation was to analyze glenohumeral and scapulothoracic kinematics and associated scapulothoracic muscle activity in a group of subjects with symptoms of shoulder impingement relative to a group of subjects without symptoms of shoulder impingement matched for occupational exposure to overhead work. SUBJECTS Fifty-two subjects were recruited from a population of construction workers with routine exposure to overhead work. METHODS Surface electromyographic data were collected from the upper and lower parts of the trapezius muscle and from the serratus anterior muscle. Electromagnetic sensors simultaneously tracked 3-dimensional motion of the trunk, scapula, and humerus during humeral elevation in the scapular plane in 3 handheld load conditions: (1) no load, (2) 2. 3-kg load, and (3) 4.6-kg load. An analysis of variance model was used to test for group and load effects for 3 phases of motion (31(-60(, 61(-90(, and 91(-120(). RESULTS Relative to the group without impingement, the group with impingement showed decreased scapular upward rotation at the end of the first of the 3 phases of interest, increased anterior tipping at the end of the third phase of interest, and increased scapular medial rotation under the load conditions. At the same time, upper and lower trapezius muscle electromyographic activity increased in the group with impingement as compared with the group without impingement in the final 2 phases, although the upper trapezius muscle changes were apparent only during the 4.6-kg load condition. The serratus anterior muscle demonstrated decreased activity in the group with impingement across all loads and phases. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION Scapular tipping (rotation about a medial to lateral axis) and serratus anterior muscle function are important to consider in the rehabilitation of patients with symptoms of shoulder impingement related to occupational exposure to overhead work. [Ludewig PM, Cook TM. Alterations in shoulder kinematics and associated muscle activity in people with symptoms of shoulder impingement.
Interkinetic nuclear migration during the early stages of lens formation in the chicken embryo.

The optic vesicle in the chicken embryo, after growing out sufficiently to establish contact with the overlying ectoderm, adheres very firmly to the latter for a period of 12-15 h (McKeehan, 1951). Within the area of adhesion the surface ectoderm is transformed into a lens placode under influence of the developing retina. Little is known about the biochemical changes involved in this tissue transformation. Langman (1959) and Langman & Maisel (1962) found a cytotoxic effect of lens protein antisera and specific a-crystallin antibodies on presumptive lens cells shortly after induction had started but before the first morphological changes characteristic for the lens placode were visible. They concluded that the synthesis of a-crystallin might be a prerequisite for lens placode formation. Recent studies with the fluorescent antibody technique, however, indicate that the first crystallins are not produced until the very end of the contact period (Zwaan I Ikeda &Zwaan, 1966). a-Crystallin appears even later, at about 3-5 days of incubation when the formation of primary lens fibers has progressed far enough almost to obliterate the lens cavity (Ikeda & Zwaan, 1967). While the appearance of crystallins can thus be regarded as a relatively late event during lens induction, striking cytological changes have been described for the earlier phases of this process (McKeehan, 1951). The nuclei of the surface ectoderm, which are at first irregularly shaped, become oval and arrange themselves with their long axis perpendicular to the apical end of the cell. First distributed at random, they are now displaced towards the basal parts of the presumptive lens cells which gradually increase in height. A similar nuclear orientation can be observed in the cells of the optic cup. This leads to close approximation of the nuclei of the future retinal and lens cells, as these two tissues remain firmly attached to each other at the base of their cells during this time. Weiss (1950) and McKeehan (1951) suggested that these visible occurrences might be associated with or be the consequence of a regrouping of macromole
A 1.62/2.7-Gb/s Adaptive Transmitter With Two-Tap Preemphasis Using a Propagation-Time Detector

A 1.62/2.7-Gb/s adaptive transmitter with two-tap preemphasis is presented. The tap coefficients are adjusted by detecting the propagation time through the channel with different lengths. This adaptive transmitter is fabricated in 0.13-¿m CMOS technology, and the core area occupies 0.25 × 0.15 mm2. The maximum power consumption from a 1.2-V supply is 32.4 mW at 2.7 Gb/s. For a 40-in FR4 PCB trace with a 12.3-dB loss, the measured RMS and peak-to-peak jitters of the recovered data are 30 and 231 ps, respectively, for a 1.62-Gb/s pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) of 231 - 1. For a 20-in FR4 PCB trace with a 10.6-dB loss, the RMS and peak-to-peak jitters are 21 and 144 ps, respectively, for a 2.7-Gb/s PRBS of 231 - 1. For both cases, the measured bit error rates are less than 10-12.
Prediction and Ensemble Forecast Verification of Hail in the Supercell Storms of 20 May 2013

AbstractDespite recent advances in storm-scale ensemble NWP, short-term (0–90 min) explicit forecasts of severe hail remain a major challenge as a result of the fast evolution and short time scales of hail-producing convective storms and the substantial uncertainty associated with the microphysical representation of hail. In this study, 0–90-min ensemble hail forecasts for the supercell storms of 20 May 2013 over central Oklahoma are examined and verified, with the goals of 1) evaluating ensemble forecast performance, 2) comparing the advantages and limitations of different forecast fields potentially suitable for the prediction of hail and severe hail in a Warn-on-Forecast setting, and 3) evaluating the use of dual-polarization radar observations for hail forecast validation. To address the challenges of hail prediction and to produce skillful forecasts, the ensemble uses a two-moment microphysics scheme that explicitly predicts a hail-like rimed-ice category and is run with a grid spacing of 500 m. Rada.