Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial properties of online social services : measurement, analysis and applications

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text. This dissertation does not exceed the regulation length of 60 000 words, including tables and footnotes. Summary Online social networking services entice millions of users to spend hours every day interacting with each other. At the same time, thanks to the widespread and growing popularity of mobile devices equipped with location-sensing technology, users are now increasingly sharing details about their geographic location and about the places they visit. This adds a crucial spatial and geographic dimension to online social services, bridging the gap between the online world and physical presence. These observations motivate the work in this dissertation: our thesis is that the spatial properties of online social networking services offer important insights about users' social behaviour. This thesis is supported by a set of results related to the measurement and the analysis of such spatial properties. First, we present a comparative study of three online social services: we find that geographic distance constrains social connections, although users exhibit heterogeneous spatial properties. Furthermore, we demonstrate that by considering only social or only spatial factors it is not possible to reproduce the observed properties. Therefore, we investigate how these factors are jointly influencing the evolution of online social services. The resulting observations are then incorporated in a new model of network growth which is able to reproduce the properties of real systems. Then, we outline two case studies where we exploit our findings in real application scenarios. The first concerns building a link prediction system to find pairs of users likely to connect on online social services. Even though spatial proximity fosters the creation of social ties, the computational challenge is accurately and efficiently to discern when being close in space results in a new social connection. We address this problem with a system that uses, alongside other information, features based on the places that users visit. The second example presents a method to extract geographic information about users sharing online videos to understand whether such videos are going to become locally or globally popular. This information is then harnessed to build caching policies that consider which items should be prioritised in memory, thus improving performance of content delivery networks. We summarise our findings with a discussion about the implications of our results, …
An empirical model that uses light attenuation and plant nitrogen status to predict within-canopy nitrogen distribution and upscale photosynthesis from leaf to whole canopy

Modelling the distribution of leaf nitrogen is central to specify photosynthetic parameters and simulate canopy photosynthesis using leaf gas exchange models. Nitrogen distribution depends both on soil nitrogen availability and within-canopy light distribution. We propose the use of a set of empirical relationships with measurable parameters to dynamically account for it. The model was assessed on alfalfa canopies under contrasting N nutrition levels. It proved able to predict nitrogen distribution and daily patterns of photosynthesis from leaf to whole canopy for a large range of situations.
Breakthrough Technologies Genetic Modification Removes an Immunodominant Allergen from Soybean 1 [ w ]

Plant Genetics Research Unit, United States Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, 975 North Warson Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63132 (E.M.H.); University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute, 1120 Marshall Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 72202 (R.M.H.); Pioneer Hi-Bred International, 7300 NW 62nd Avenue, Johnston, Iowa 50131–1004 (R.J.); and Dupont Experimental Station, P.O. Box 80402, Wilmington, Delaware 19880–0402 (A.J.K.)
Barriers and Facilitators of Transferring Research to Practice: An Exploratory Case Study of Motivational Interviewing

Based on Simpson's program change model, this study explored personal and organizational barriers and facilitators of transferring a research-based innovation, motivational interviewing (MI), into the practices of county-employed case managers and counselors. A mixed-method perspective was employed whereby practitioner and consumer data were gathered via focus groups, and additional practitioner data were collected by means of a 2-wave panel survey. Practitioner focus group data revealed several perceived organizational barriers related to the resource of time, whereas the consumer focus group data uncovered the potential need for practitioners to adopt a research-based technology such as MI. Correlational analyses of practitioner survey data found that the organizational resource of adequate computer equipment and the staff attributes of professional growth, efficacy, and job satisfaction facilitated intention to adopt and implement MI. Implications for human services administrators and MI trainers are discussed.
On the Etiology and Politics of Sexual Phenomenology

Working from the conceptual site, which discloses the relationship between the theory and the practice of Judith Butler's post-structuralist framework, this paper looks at male lesbians to amplify the diversity within gender identity and sexual expression. Male lesbians problematise the sex-leads-to-gender hierarchy and, in doing so, unravel the entire enterprise of heteronormativity. More importantly, perhaps, they illustrate the confluence in the culturally manifested and scientifically prescribed binary between nature and culture. In short, this paper considers the myriad possibilities ‘biologically read’ males who identify as lesbians have on the current social epistemology that has been crystallised on dichotomies of male/female and nature/culture.
Automated Subcategorization of Named Entities

There has been much interest in the recent past concerning the possibilities for automated categorization of named entities. The research presented here describes a method for the subcategorization of location names. Subcategorization of locations is not a trivial task even for human subjects, who perform at accuracy levels of less than 58%. After experimenting with both Bayesian classifiers and decision tree learning algorithms, we have designed a system that achieves accuracy levels greater than 80%.
The development and recovery of social capital through community-based adult learning

This paper explores the connection between participation in community-based adult learning (CBAL) and the development of social capital. It is based on a life-history study of participation in community-based adult learning opportunities undertaken in two local authority areas in Scotland. A life-history approach was chosen in order to ensure that the learners' perspectives were at the heart of the research while taking account of the context in which learning took place. Two semi-structured life history interviews were carried out with each of 10 learners and data were analysed in three stages, which led to the identification of cross-cutting themes. The paper explores the learners' experiences of participating in CBAL as described by them. It confirms for CBAL what has been established previously for other types of adult learning, namely that participation can support the development of social capital for some learners. Furthermore, it is argued that other learners were able to recover decreased or lost social capital through their participation. The paper contributes to an understanding of community-based adult learning as part of the continuum of lifelong learning opportunities, as it illustrates the potential of CBAL not only to support the development of social capital, but also to help learners recover capital that might have decreased through their life circumstances.
Time Delay for Aerial Ammonia Concentration Measurements in Livestock Buildings

Correct measurements of ammonia concentration in air still present considerable challenges. The high water solubility and polarity can cause it to adsorb on surfaces in the entire sampling system, including sampling lines, filters, valves, pumps and instruments, causing substantial measuring errors and time delays. To estimate time delay characteristics of a Photo Acoustic Multi Gas Monitor 1312 and a Multi Point Sampler continuous measurement of aerial ammonia concentrations at different levels was performed. In order to obtain reproducible data, a wind tunnel was used to generate selected concentrations inside and a background concentration representing the air inlet of the tunnel. Four different concentration levels (0.8 ppm, 6.2 ppm, 9.7 ppm and 13.7 ppm) were used in the experiments, with an additional outdoor concentration level as background. The results indicated a substantial time delay when switching between the measuring positions with high and low concentration and vice versa. These properties may course serious errors for estimation of e.g. gas emissions whenever more than one measuring channel is applied. To reduce the measurement errors, some suggestions regarding design of the measurement setup and measuring strategies were presented.
Identifying novel small molecule antagonists for mLST8 protein using computational approaches

Abstract Mammalian lethal with SEC13 protein 8 (mLST8), is an indispensable protein subunit of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway that interacts with the kinase domain of mTOR protein, thereby stabilizing its active site. Experimental studies reported the over expression of mLST8 in human colon and prostate cancers by activation of both mTORC1/2 complexes and subsequent downstream substrates leading to tumor progression. Considering its role, targeting mLST8 protein would be a therapeutic approach against tumor progression in colon and prostate cancers. Hence, using in silico structure based drug design approach, the comparative binding patterns of 1,1′-binapthyl-2,2′diol (BINOL), 1-(2-carboxynaphth-1yl)-2-naphthoic acid (SCF-12) and their analogs in the cavity of mLST8 were explored. ADME and binding energy calculations led to the identification of five compounds with favorable Glide (G) scores and implicated the importance of Asn132 and Gln225 as key binding residues. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and free energy landscape (FEL) approaches helped in elucidating the binding mechanism and suggested the possibility of ligands 1–3 namely, ZINC01765622, ZINC62723702 and ZINC02576980 to be promising antagonists for mLST8. Thus, this study substantiates the prospect of targeting mLST8 protein using potent hits which could hinder tumor progression in colon and prostate cancers.
Latent Semantic Clustering of German Verbs with Treebank Data

Treebank data have been utilized as data sources for a wide range of tasks in computational linguistics, including statistical parsing, anaphora resolution, induction of valence lexica, etc. More recently, researchers have experimented with extracting semantic information from syntactically annotated data. Here, treebank data have been used for the purposes of identifying selectional preferences of verbs and for the purposes of clustering verb classes (most notably using latent semantic clustering, or LSC for short). The present paper follows this recent tradition of extracting semantic information from syntactically annotated data. The goal of this work is to determine verb classes for German verbs by means of latent semantic clustering. The ultimate goal of this research is task-oriented. We would like to investigate whether verb clusters obtained by the LSC method can be used as semantic knowledge for the purposes of anaphora resolution. In this sense, the current paper is a preparatory study and awaits a task-oriented evaluation in future work. We will present experiments with two treebanks, TuBa-D/Z (Telljohann et al., 2003) and TuPP-D/Z (Muller, 2004b) that are both based on German newspaper text from the daily newspaper die tageszeitung (taz). The two resources differ significantly along the following dimensions:
Children as co‐decision makers in the family? The case of family holidays

Purpose – The aim of the article is to examine children's role in family purchase decision making with a particular focus on how much impact children are perceived to have and in what ways children impact family decision making concerning holidays.Design/methodology/approach – Information was gathered from 26 in‐depth interviews with parents and children, telephone interviews with 800 Danish and 1,200 Germans, and questionnaires from 200 Danish and 200 German children.Findings – Results show that parents perceive children to have moderate impact on decision making. Children, on the contrary, think they have quite a high level of impact. Parents perceive themselves to have the decisive vote, but in this “decisive vote” parents take children's manifestations and prior experiences with the children into account. Children do have significant impact in various ways through a broad array of techniques, directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously. Children vocalise their wishes, and parents are often .
Characterization of the Ca2+-gated cation channel in sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicles.

Two types of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) vesicles, i.e., normal (NSR) and heavy (HSR), were prepared by using a centrifugation technique, and further characterization of the cation transport in the two types of SR vesicles was performed by measuring the choline influx. The choline influx in SR vesicles was measured by following the change in light scattering intensity using a stopped flow apparatus. Analysis of the choline influx gave the following results. (1) There exists a Ca2+-gated cation channel in SR vesicles other than the K+-selective, voltage-dependent cation channel. The Ca2+-gated cation channel was activated by both extravesicular Ca2+ and caffeine, and inhibited by procaine and N,N'-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide. (2) About 70% of the HSR vesicles have Ca2+-gated cation channels, whereas only 20% of NSR vesicles have these channels. On the other hand, 60% of HSR vesicles also have the voltage-gated cation channels and 80% of NSR vesicles have these channels. On the basis of various properties of the Ca2+-gated cation channel, it is suggested that this channel must be the one which mediates the Ca2+-induced Ca2+ release.
Apoptotic-like Leishmania exploit the host´s autophagy machinery to reduce T-cell-mediated parasite elimination

Apoptosis is a well-defined cellular process in which a cell dies, characterized by cell shrinkage and DNA fragmentation. In parasites like Leishmania, the process of apoptosis-like cell death has been described. Moreover upon infection, the apoptotic-like population is essential for disease development, in part by silencing host phagocytes. Nevertheless, the exact mechanism of how apoptosis in unicellular organisms may support infectivity remains unclear. Therefore we investigated the fate of apoptotic-like Leishmania parasites in human host macrophages. Our data showed—in contrast to viable parasites—that apoptotic-like parasites enter an LC3+, autophagy-like compartment. The compartment was found to consist of a single lipid bilayer, typical for LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP). As LAP can provoke anti-inflammatory responses and autophagy modulates antigen presentation, we analyzed how the presence of apoptotic-like parasites affected the adaptive immune response. Macrophages infected with viable Leishmania induced proliferation of CD4+ T-cells, leading to a reduced intracellular parasite survival. Remarkably, the presence of apoptotic-like parasites in the inoculum significantly reduced T-cell proliferation. Chemical induction of autophagy in human monocyte-derived macrophage (hMDM), infected with viable parasites only, had an even stronger proliferation-reducing effect, indicating that host cell autophagy and not parasite viability limits the T-cell response and enhances parasite survival. Concluding, our data suggest that apoptotic-like Leishmania hijack the host cells´ autophagy machinery to reduce T-cell proliferation. Furthermore, the overall population survival is guaranteed, explaining the benefit of apoptosis-like cell death in a single-celled parasite and defining the host autophagy pathway as a potential therapeutic target in treating Leishmaniasis.
Karyotype diversity and patterns of chromosomal evolution in Eigenmannia (Teleostei, Gymnotiformes, Sternopygidae)

Abstract Conventional (Giemsa, C-banding, Ag – NORs) and molecular [5S rDNA, 18S rDNA, (TTAGGG)n] cytogenetic techniques were employed to study six species of the genus Eigenmannia Jordan & Evermann, 1896. They exhibited diploid chromosome numbers ranging from 2n=28 (Eigenmannia sp.1) to 2n=38 (Eigenmannia virescens (Valenciennes, 1836)). The C-banding results revealed that species with the lowest 2n have less heterochromatin content and that morphologically differentiated sex chromosomes observed in two species showed distinct patterns of heterochromatin. While the X1, X2 and Y-chromosomes of Eigenmannia sp.2 showed only centromeric heterochromatin, the XY sex chromosomes of Eigenmannia virescens possessed large heterochromatic blocks in the terminal position, particularly on the X chromosome. The nucleolus organizer regions (NORs) were located in different positions when compared to the 5S rDNA sites. Additionally, the presence of minor ribosomal gene sites on the sex chromosome pair of Eigenmannia virescens represented a new type of the sex chromosomes in this group. The telomeric probe (TTAGGG)n hybridized to the terminal portion of all chromosomes in all species examined however, interstitial telomeric sites were found in the metacentric pair No. 2 in Eigenmannia sp.1. The analyzes confirmed some hypotheses about karyotype evolution in the genus Eigenmannia, and brought new information about the distribution of the genetic material in the chromosomes of the samples analyzed providing new insights for understanding the process differentiation in the genomes of species under study.
Event-related potential studies of outcome processing and feedback-guided learning

In order to control behavior in an adaptive manner the brain has to learn how some situations and actions predict positive or negative outcomes. During the last decade cognitive neuroscientists have shown that the brain is able to evaluate and learn from outcomes within a few hundred milliseconds of their occurrence. This research has been primarily focused on the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the P3, two event-related potential (ERP) components that are elicited by outcomes. The FRN is a frontally distributed negative-polarity ERP component that typically reaches its maximal amplitude 250 ms after outcome presentation and tends to be larger for negative than for positive outcomes. The FRN has been associated with activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. The P3 (~300-600 ms) is a parietally distributed positive-polarity ERP component that tends to be larger for large magnitude than for small magnitude outcomes. The neural sources of the P3 are probably distributed over different regions of the cortex. This paper examines the theories that have been proposed to explain the functional role of these two ERP components during outcome processing. Special attention is paid to extant literature addressing how these ERP components are modulated by outcome valence (negative vs. positive), outcome magnitude (large vs. small), outcome probability (unlikely vs. likely) and behavioral adjustment. The literature offers few generalizable conclusions, but is beset with a number of inconsistencies across studies. This paper discusses the potential reasons for these inconsistencies and points out some challenges that will shape the field over the next decade.
Photodynamic Therapy with a Diode Laser for Implanted Fibrosarcoma in Mice Employing Mono‐L‐Aspartyl Chlorin E6

Abstract— The authors performed photodynamic therapy (PDT), avoiding any hyperthermic effects, using a newly developed diode laser and photosensitizer, mono‐L‐aspar‐tyl chlorin e6 (NPe6), of Meth‐A fibrosarcoma implanted in mice and achieved tumor therapeutic benefit. The photodynamic light treatment was performed 5 h following the photosensitizer administration. With 5.0 mg/kg NPe6 and light doses of 50, 100, 150 and 200 J/cm2, the tumor cure rates were 20, 50, 70 and 90%, respectively. With 100 J/cm2 laser exposure and NPe6 doses of 1.25, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 mg/kg, the tumor cure rates were 0, 20, 50, 70 and 90%, respectively. A charge‐coupled device (CCD) camera system was employed to measure the NPe6 fluorescence intensity correlating with the residual amount of the photosensitizer at deferent depth from the tumor surface. The ratios of the NPe6 fluorescence intensity at 3 mm from the tumor surface following 50, 100, 150 and 200 J/cm2 laser exposure to no laser exposure were 0.73, 0.36, 0.22 and 0.16, respectively. With samples sectioned at 1 mm depth, after 50 J/cm2 and the same photosensitizer dose (5 mg/kg) this ratio was 0.19. These results suggest that a certain increase in the tumor tissue level of NPe6 and a certain increase of laser light dose reaching deeper layers of tumor caused an increase in percent cure. In addition, the effectiveness of PDT depends on the total laser dose reaching deeper layers of tumors. Furthermore, the effectiveness of PDT tends to correlate with the amount of NPe6 photobleaching by PDT.
Mobile Device Security : The case for side channel resistance

As the functionality of mobile devices has increased, so have the threats. These devices make attractive targets, given the sensitivity of user and corporate data they process and store, their emerging use for viewing protected content and conducting sensitive banking and payment transactions. Until recently, hardware and software based defenses for mobile platforms lagged behind those found in more mature systems.
Myocardial Adiponectin Isoform Shift in Dogs with Congestive Heart Failure—A Comparison to Hibernating Brown Bears (Ursus arctos horribilis)

Adiponectin is the most abundant plasma adipokine, and is well known for its role in energy homeostasis and cardiac protection. In humans with dilated cardiomyopathy, myocardial adiponectin protein expression is reduced compared to normal hearts and has been implicated in the pathology of cardiomyopathy. Serum adiponectin levels are often conflicting, with higher levels associated with poor survival in humans with congestive heart failure (CHF). We evaluated adiponectin serum concentrations and myocardial protein expression in dogs with naturally occurring myxomatous mitral valve disease and CHF. We compared the findings to active and hibernating brown bears as bears are adapted to endure an extreme period of low cardiac output during their annual hibernation. Bears exhibited largely the active high-molecular weight (HMW) versus the low-molecular weight isoforms of myocardial adiponectin (HMW:LMW = 6.3) during both the active period and hibernation, while healthy dogs exhibited a more balanced mix of isoforms. Dogs with CHF expressed predominately HMW isoforms of adiponectin (HMW:LMW = 12.5), appearing more similar to bears. In contrast to humans, serum adiponectin was significantly lower in dogs with CHF and lowest levels in the severest CHF class. In both dogs and bears, myocardial adiponectin was expressed independent of circulating adiponectin concentrations, suggesting a local regulatory mechanism within the heart.