Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding what they do with what they know

This work seeks to understand what "they" (Web advertisers) actually do with the information available to them. We analyze the ads shown to users during controlled browsing as well as examine the inferred demographics and interests shown in Ad Preference Managers provided by advertisers. In an initial study of ad networks and a focused study of the Google ad network, we found many expected contextual, behavioral and location-based ads along with combinations of these types of ads. We also observed profile-based ads. Most behavioral ads were shown as categories in the Ad Preference Manager (APM) of the ad network, but we found unexpected cases where the interests were not visible in the APM. We also found unexpected behavior for the Google ad network in that non-contextual ads were shown related to induced sensitive topics regarding sexual orientation, health and financial matters. In a smaller study of Facebook, we did not find clear evidence that a user's browsing behavior on non-Facebook sites influences the ads shown to the user on Facebook, but we did observe such influence when the Facebook Like button is used to express interest in content. We did observe Facebook ads appearing to target users for sensitive interests with some ads even asserting such sensitive information, which appears to be a violation of Facebook's stated policy.
Triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein margination: a potential surrogate for whole-body lipoprotein lipase activity and effects of eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids.

BACKGROUND Margination occurs when blood borne particles attach to the vessel wall. Triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein (TRL) particles marginate when they bind to endothelial lipoprotein lipase (LpL). OBJECTIVE This study was undertaken to determine whether TRL margination reflects in vivo LpL activity and whether n-3 fatty acids affect fasting and fed TRL margination. DESIGN Healthy subjects (n = 33) began with a 4-wk, placebo (olive oil; 4 g/d) run-in period and were then randomly assigned to 4 wk of treatment with 4 g/d of ethyl esters of either safflower oil (SAF; control), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), or docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Margination volume (MV) was calculated by subtracting true from apparent plasma volume. RESULTS MVs were 3 times as great during the fasting state as during the fed state (P < 0.0001). In both the fasting and the fed states, MV was significantly correlated with plasma triacylglycerol and TRL half-lives. In the fed state, MV was also correlated with preheparin LpL, whereas in the fasting state it was not. There was no significant correlation between preheparin LpL and postheparin LpL in the fasting state. Relative to SAF, EPA and DHA supplementation resulted in higher MVs by 64% and 53% (both P < 0.001), respectively, in the fasting state, without significantly reducing fasting triacylglycerol concentrations. In the fed state, DHA doubled the MV (P < 0.05), whereas EPA had no significant effect. CONCLUSIONS The correlations between MV and TRL half-lives and preheparin LpL suggest that MV could be a reflection of whole-body LpL binding capacity. The increases in MVs with EPA and DHA supplementation suggest that these fatty acids may increase the amount of endothelial-bound LpL or its affinity for TRL.
Effects of Molecular Crowding on the Dynamics of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins

Inside cells, the concentration of macromolecules can reach up to 400 g/L. In such crowded environments, proteins are expected to behave differently than in vitro. It has been shown that the stability and the folding rate of a globular protein can be altered by the excluded volume effect produced by a high density of macromolecules. However, macromolecular crowding effects on intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are less explored. These proteins can be extremely dynamic and potentially sample a wide ensemble of conformations under non-denaturing conditions. The dynamic properties of IDPs are intimately related to the timescale of conformational exchange within the ensemble, which govern target recognition and how these proteins function. In this work, we investigated the macromolecular crowding effects on the dynamics of several IDPs by measuring the NMR spin relaxation parameters of three disordered proteins (ProTα, TC1, and α-synuclein) with different extents of residual structures. To aid the interpretation of experimental results, we also performed an MD simulation of ProTα. Based on the MD analysis, a simple model to correlate the observed changes in relaxation rates to the alteration in protein motions under crowding conditions was proposed. Our results show that 1) IDPs remain at least partially disordered despite the presence of high concentration of other macromolecules, 2) the crowded environment has differential effects on the conformational propensity of distinct regions of an IDP, which may lead to selective stabilization of certain target-binding motifs, and 3) the segmental motions of IDPs on the nanosecond timescale are retained under crowded conditions. These findings strongly suggest that IDPs function as dynamic structural ensembles in cellular environments.
Motor Equivalent Strategies in the Production of German /∫/ under Perturbation

The German sibilant /∫/ is produced with a constriction in the postalveolar region and often with protruded lips. By covarying horizontal lip and tongue position speakers can keep a similar acoustic output even if the articulation varies. This study investigates whether during two weeks of adaptation to an artificial palate speakers covary these two articulatory parameters, whether tactile landmarks have an influence on the covariation and to what extent speakers can foresee the acoustic result of the covariation without auditory feedback. Six German speakers were recorded with EMA. Four of them showed a covariation of lip and tongue, which is consistent with the motor equivalence hypothesis. The acoustic output, however, does not stay entirely constant but varies with the tongue position. The role of tactile landmarks is negligible. To a certain extent, speakers are able to adapt even without auditory feedback.
Pay-as-you-go Feedback in Data Quality Systems

In many domains such as the web, sensor networks and social media, sources often provide conflicting information. It is of utmost importance to resolve conflicts and identify correct information. A number of approaches, referred to as truth finders, have been proposed recently. They address the problem of truth discovery using different principles such as link analysis, Bayesian modeling and reputation systems. None of the existing approaches, however, leverages user feedback to improve the performance of these truth finders. In the present work, we propose a novel framework based on the concept of the value of perfect information that orders existing conflicts by their ability to boost the collective performance of the truth finder on all objects. We devise a number of algorithms that take into account the voting network structure and the level of agreement/disagreement among sources, and produce effective orderings of objects for validation with interactive response rates. Finally, we present an extensive experimental evaluation where we show that our solution outperforms existing truth finders, and also study the trade-offs between the efficiency and effectiveness of the various ordering algorithms.
Application of the dual integrated force method to the analysis of the off-axis three-point flexure test of unidirectional composites

This paper shows the use of the dual integrated force method in the finite element method and its application to unidirectional composite laminates. This method was developed by SN Patnaik for isotropic materials, considering not only the equilibrium equations but also the compatibility conditions. The method is applied to obtain the stiffness matrix of a four-node rectangular plate element. Then, a three-point flexure test of a unidirectional off-axis composite has been analyzed. The results obtained with this method have been compared with those obtained from a previous analytic approach and with those obtained by commercial software of finite element method, which is based on the stiffness method.
Smart Handpumps: A Preliminary Data Analysis

Groundwater accessed by handpumps is the primary water supply for many people in Africa. This “Smart Water” project considers the study of a region of Kenya where there is significant demand for groundwater, especially among the poor. Some of the engineering aims of this project are to determine if data acquired from accelerometers mounted in hand-pumps can be used to perform three tasks: (i) estimate the depth of the groundwater at the pump, (ii) predict pump failure, and (iii) classify the user of the pump (e.g., as being a man, woman, or child). This paper describes an initial investigation, based on one week of data collection, that demonstrates there is useful information in the accelerometer data collected from handpumps, which can be discovered using machine learning techniques. We show that features derived from the accelerometry data exhibit stable, similar behaviour suggesting that users and pump locations may be characterised. We demonstrate that a machine learning system can classify the data according to person and pump and accurately differentiate between different users. We conclude that our preliminary study suggests that information may exist in accelerometry from handpumps that could allow us to answer the three main questions of the “Smart Water” project, described above, motivating a largescale' data-collection activity.
The Omega-3 Fatty Acid Docosahexaenoic Acid Attenuates Organic Dust-Induced Airway Inflammation

Workers exposed to organic dusts from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are at risk for developing airway inflammatory diseases. Available preventative and therapeutic measures for alleviating dust-induced lung disease are inadequate. Because omega-3 fatty acids can mitigate inflammatory processes, we aimed to determine whether nutritional supplementation with the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) could reduce the airway inflammatory consequences of exposures to organic dust. Aqueous extracts of organic dusts from swine CAFOs (ODE) were utilized. In DHA-pretreated human bronchial epithelial cells, lung fibroblasts, monocyte cell cultures, and precision-cut murine lung slices, we found that DHA pretreatment dose-dependently decreased ODE-induced inflammatory cytokine production. To determine the in vivo significance of DHA, C57BL/6 mice were orally administered DHA for seven days prior to treatment with intranasal ODE or saline inhalations. Animals treated with 2 mg DHA demonstrated significant reductions in ODE-induced bronchial alveolar lavage neutrophil influx and pro-inflammatory cytokine/chemokine production compared to mice exposed to ODE alone. Collectively, these data demonstrate that DHA affects several lung cells to reduce the airway inflammatory response to organic dust exposures. Dietary supplementation with DHA may be an effective therapeutic strategy to reduce the airway inflammatory consequences in individuals exposed to agriculture dust environments.
Patient-Reported Outcome Instruments in Spine Surgery

Study Design. A critical review of the current literature. Objective. The purpose of this study was to determine frequency, trends, and methods of utilization of spine-related PROIs over the last 10 years. Summary of Background Data. Patient-reported outcome instruments (PROIs) have become the gold standard to assess the efficacy of various medical and surgical treatments. Currently, however, there is an expansive range of PROIs without a clear consensus or guideline addressing which PROIs should be used for a particular diagnosis or surgical intervention. Methods. A PubMed search was conducted from 2004 to 2013 of 5 orthopedic journals (The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, The Bone and Joint Journal, The Spine Journal, The European Spine Journal, and Spine) that publish spine articles, chosen on the basis of readership and impact factor. Journal abstracts were inspected for spine surgery and inclusion of at least 1 PROI. All articles containing PROIs and investigating a surgical intervention with a level of evidence (LOE) 1 to 4 were included for analysis. Article title, LOE, journal, and chosen PROI were recorded for selected articles. Results. Out of 19,736 articles published in our selected time frame, 1,079 utilized PROIs. Most studies were LOE 4 (32.7%). Nearly half (48.9%) of all articles addressed degenerative thoracolumbar conditions. In total, there were 206 unique PROIs in the studies chosen for inclusion. The top 6 instruments utilized were the (1) visual analog scale, (2) Oswestry disability index, (3) Short Form-36, (4) Japanese Orthopaedic Association Outcome Questionnaire, (5) Neck Disability Index, and (6) Scoliosis Research Society-22. Conclusion. The breadth of PROIs in spine surgery is extensive. Although there are preferred patient-reported outcome measures, a consensus or guideline addressing which instruments should be used for a particular diagnosis or procedure may be warranted. Level of Evidence: 4
Cellular automaton models for competition in patchy environments: Facilitation, inhibition, and tolerance

We have developed cellular automaton models for two species competing in a patchy environment. We have modeled three common types of competition: facilitation (in which the winning species can colonize only after the losing species has arrived) inhibition (in which either species is able to prevent the other from colonizing) and tolerance (in which the species most tolerant of reduced resource levels wins). The state of a patch is defined by the presence or absence of each species. State transition probabilities are determined by rates of disturbance, competitive exclusion, and colonization. Colonization is restricted to neighboring patches. In all three models, disturbance permits regional persistence of species that are excluded by competition locally. Persistence, and hence diversity, is maximized at intermediate disturbance frequencies. If disturbance and dispersal rates are sufficiently high, the inferior competitor need not have a dispersal advantage to persist. Using a new method for measuring the spatial patterns of nominal data, we show that none of these competition models generates patchiness at equilibrium. In the inhibition model, however, transient patchiness decays very slowly. We compare the cellular automaton models to the corresponding mean-field patch-occupancy models, in which colonization is not restricted to neighboring patches and depends on spatially averaged species frequencies. The patch-occupancy model does an excellent job of predicting the equilibrium frequencies of the species and the conditions required for coexistence, but not of predicting transient behavior.
Image segmentation assisted by a triple-camera setup

Photographers suffer from many challenging problems when separating and compositing images, such as the color camouflage and unpleasant color bleeding artifacts. To tackle these issues, we present a solution to foreand background segmentation for images taken from multiple cameras, which introduce the parallax that leads to the foreground model projecting to different background locations, which has been designed to exhibit a special pattern to ease the object extraction. We optimize the camera distance and model position to ensure the silhouette of the model falls on different colors of the background pattern on the wall. Furthermore, we develop a visualization tool based on our algorithm to help photographers effectively setup their studios.
Mitogenome sequencing reveals shallow evolutionary histories and recent divergence time between morphologically and ecologically distinct European whitefish (Coregonus spp.)

The advent of second‐generation sequencing has made it possible to quickly and economically generate whole mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) sequences. To date, mitogenome studies of nonmodel organisms have demonstrated increased power for resolving interspecies relationships. We explored an alternate use of such data to recover relationships and population history of closely related lineages with a shallow evolutionary history. Using a GS‐FLX platform, we sequenced 106 mitogenomes from the Coregonus lavaretus (Europe) and Coregonus clupeaformis (North America) species complexes to investigate the evolutionary history of the endangered Danish North Sea houting (NSH) and other closely related Danish and Baltic European lake whitefish (ELW). Two well‐supported clades were found within both ELW and NSH, probably reflecting historical introgression via Baltic migrants. Although ELW and NSH are not reciprocally monophyletic, they share no haplotypes, suggesting recent, but strong, reproductive isolation. The divergence time between NSH and the geographically closest ELW population was estimated using IMa, assuming isolation with migration and a new mutation rate estimate chosen to avoid time‐dependency effects. The estimate of c. 2700 bp was remarkably similar to results obtained using microsatellite markers. Within North American C. clupeaformis, the divergence time between the two lineages (Atlantic and Acadian) was estimated as between 20 000 and 60 000 bp. Under the assumption that NSH and ELW colonized Denmark following the last glacial maximum, Bayesian Serial SimCoal analysis showed consistency with a scenario of long‐term stability, resulting from a rapid initial sixfold population expansion. The findings illustrate the utility of mitogenome data for resolving recent intraspecific divergence events and provide evidence for recent reproductive isolation of the phenotypically divergent NSH.
FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF DIACEREIN EMULGEL FOR PSORIATIC ARTHRITIES

The aim of present work was to develop a emulgel for the topical delivery of the poorly water soluble drug diacerein (BCS Class II) which is useful the in the treatment of psoriatic arthrities. Different formula on emulgels were prepared and evaluated for their physical appearance, rheological behaviour and in vitro drug release. The influence of the concentration of gelling agent carbopol 940( 0.75%,1%,1.25%), the concentration of both the emulsifying agent (2.5% and 1% w/w of mixture of span 20 and tween 20) and the oil phase (6%,7% and 8% w/w of liquid paraffin) were optimized by using 3 2 factorial design. Prepared emulgels was investigated for different parameters. All the prepared emulgels showed acceptable physical properties concerning colour, homogeneity, consistency, and pH value, spreadability, exdrudability. The results of in vitro drug release showed that carbopol 940 (1%) based emulgel gave better release. Also it was found that the emulsifying agent concentration had the most pronounced effect on the drug release from the emulgels, followed by the oil phase concentration, which has a retardation effect, and finally on the type of the gelling agent. It was suggested that the diacerein emulgel formulation prepared with carbopol 940 with 1% concentration, oil phase (8%w/w liquid paraffin) and optimum concentration of emulsifying agent(3.5%w/w), showed an optimum formula for highest drug release (91.55% after 4 hrs) and no skin irritation, which followed hixon crowell diffusion model with a diffusion controlled mechanism.
3D Graphics Techniques for Capturing and Inspecting Hyperspectral Appearance

Feature films and computer games exhibit stunning photo realistic computer imagery in motion. The challenges in computer graphics realism lie in acquiring physically accurate material appearance in a high spectral resolution and representing the appearance with perceptual faithfulness. While many approaches for true spectral rendering have been tried in computer graphics, they have not been extensively explored due to the lack of reliable 3D spectral data. Recently, a hyper spectral 3D acquisition system and viewing software have been introduced to the graphics community. In this paper, we review the latest acquisition and visualization techniques for hyper spectral imaging in graphics. We give an overview of the 3D imaging system for capturing hyper spectral appearance on 3D objects and the visualization software package to exploit such high-tech digital data.
Exposure-Response Estimates for Diesel Engine Exhaust and Lung Cancer Mortality Based on Data from Three Occupational Cohorts

Objectives To derive a meta-exposure-response curve (ERC) for DEE and lung cancer mortality and estimate lifetime excess risks (ELRs) of lung cancer mortality based on assumed occupational and environmental exposure scenarios. Method We conducted a meta-regression of lung cancer mortality and cumulative exposure to elemental carbon (EC), a proxy measure of DEE, based on relative risk (RR) estimates reported by three large occupational cohort studies. Based on the derived risk function, we calculated ELRs for several lifetime occupational and environmental exposure scenarios, and also calculated the fractions of annual lung cancer deaths attributable to DEE. Results We estimated a lnRR of 0.00098 (95% CI: 0.00055, 0.0014) for lung cancer mortality with each 1-μg/m 3-year increase in cumulative EC. Estimated numbers of excess lung cancer deaths through age 80 for lifetime occupational exposures of 1, 10, and 25 μg/m 3 EC were 17, 200, and 689 per 10 000, respectively. For lifetime environmental exposure to 0.8 μg/m 3 EC, we estimated 21 excess lung cancer deaths per 10 000. Based on broad assumptions regarding past exposures we estimate that approximately 6% of annual lung cancer deaths may be due to DEE exposure. Conclusions Combined data from three US occupational cohort studies suggest that DEE at levels common in the workplace and in outdoor air appear to pose substantial excess lifetime risks of lung cancer, above usually acceptable limits in the US and Europe, which are generally set at 1/1000 and 1/100 000 based on lifetime exposure for the occupational and general population, respectively.
Interpretable and Globally Optimal Prediction for Textual Grounding using Image Concepts

Textual grounding is an important but challenging task for human-computer interaction, robotics and knowledge mining. Existing algorithms generally formulate the task as selection from a set of bounding box proposals obtained from deep net based systems. In this work, we demonstrate that we can cast the problem of textual grounding into a unified framework that permits efficient search over all possible bounding boxes. Hence, the method is able to consider significantly more proposals and doesn't rely on a successful first stage hypothesizing bounding box proposals. Beyond, we demonstrate that the trained parameters of our model can be used as word-embeddings which capture spatial-image relationships and provide interpretability. Lastly, at the time of submission, our approach outperformed the current state-of-the-art methods on the Flickr 30k Entities and the ReferItGame dataset by 3.08% and 7.77% respectively.
On Targeting Frameworks and Optimal Monetary Policy

Speed limit policy, a monetary policy strategy that focuses on stabilizing inflation and the change in the output gap, consistently delivers better welfare outcomes than flexible inflation targeting or flexible price level targeting in empirical New Keynesian models when policymakers lack the ability to commit to future policies. Even if the policymaker can commit under an inflation targeting strategy, the discretionary speed limit policy performs better for most empirically plausible model parameterizations from a normative perspective.