Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Merton and Lazarsfeld: Collaboration on Communication Research—Two Papers, Two Research Instruments, and Two Kindred Concepts

This article attempts to thoroughly map the cooperation between R. K. Merton and P. F. Lazarsfeld on communication research in the 1940s. Merton mainly gained fame for his work on theory and Lazarsfeld for his work on methodology, but this article is not interested in the important research results attained by the two researchers independently or in cooperation with other researchers. It concentrates solely on the demonstrable results of their collaboration. The interpersonal influence of the two researchers was key to the development of their concepts, research tools, and theoretical generalisations. Their collaboration in the field of communication research led to the creation of two interlinked research methods—the programme analyser and the focused interview. The conclusions they reached on communication theory in two papers they wrote together and the pair of sociological concepts, ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘influentials’, that they developed in the field of interpersonal communication are both still widely used and elaborated on today.
Use and Importance of Personality Variables in Work Settings

This chapter describes what we have learned in the past decade in the area of personality research in organizations and integrates it with what we learned before that has stood the test of time. Separate sections focus on (a) the structure of personality, (b) models of the determinants of work performance that include personality variables, (c) the magnitude of criterion-related validity of personality variables for predicting work-related outcomes, (d) effects of including personality measures for hiring and promotion decisions on demographic and ethnic groups, (e) different methods of measuring personality variables, and (f) effects of intentional distortion on validity and strategies for ameliorating its effects. We close with a summary of the evidence and suggestions for a path forward. We call for (a) the development of a meta-analytic database linking specific personality variables to a standard criterion taxonomy to be used for applying synthetic validation models, (b) further research exploring the mechanisms through which personality operates to influence individual performance, (c) the continued application of computer adaptive personality tests, and (d) more research into collecting personality ratings from other observers. Keywords: personality; job performance; personnel selection; intentional distortion; process models; meta-analysis; synthetic validation
Video editing based on behaviors-for-attention - an approach to professional editing using a simple scheme

In desktop manipulations such as cooking or assembly instruction videos, a performer often draws the viewers' attention to significant portions of the video's content by means of a specific set of physical behaviors. We verified the efficacy of videos edited based on those behaviors by observing television programs and simulating them with the use of our editing scheme. We first discuss the typical behaviors commonly shown in TV programs, and statistically describe the relationships between certain types of shot changes. We then propose an editing method using those behaviors, and demonstrate that our method generates videos whose quality is close to that of some of television programs. Moreover, we demonstrate the usability of our online editing system in experiments involving actual scenes.
Characterization of a gastrointestinal tract microscale cell culture analog used to predict drug toxicity

The lining of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is the largest surface exposed to the external environment in the human body. One of the main functions of the small intestine is absorption, and intestinal absorption is a route used by essential nutrients, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals to enter the systemic circulation. Understanding the effects of digestion on a drug or chemical, how compounds interact with and are absorbed through the small intestinal epithelium, and how these compounds affect the rest of the body is critical for toxicological evaluation. Our goal is to create physiologically realistic in vitro models of the human GI tract that provide rapid, inexpensive, and accurate predictions of the body's response to orally delivered drugs and chemicals. Our group has developed an in vitro microscale cell culture analog (µCCA) of the GI tract that includes digestion, a mucus layer, and physiologically realistic cell populations. The GI tract µCCA, coupled with a multi‐chamber silicon µCCA representing the systemic circulation, is described and challenged with acetaminophen. Proof of concept experiments showed that acetaminophen passes through and is metabolized by the in vitro intestinal epithelium and is further metabolized by liver cells, resulting in liver cell toxicity in a dose‐dependent manner. The µCCA response is also consistent with in vivo measurements in mice. The system should be broadly useful for studies on orally delivered drugs or ingestion of chemicals with potential toxicity. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009; 104: 193–205 © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Map building with mobile robots in populated environments

The problem of generating maps with mobile robots has received considerable attention over the past years. However, most of the approaches assume that the environment is static during the data-acquisition phase. In this paper we consider the problem of creating maps with mobile robots in populated environments. Our approach uses a probabilistic method to track multiple people and to incorporate the results of the tracking technique into the mapping process. The resulting maps are more accurate since corrupted readings are treated accordingly during the matching phase and since the number of spurious objects in the resulting maps is reduced. Our approach has been implemented and tested on real robot systems in indoor and outdoor scenarios. We present several experiments illustrating the capabilities of our approach to generate accurate 2D and 3D maps.
Optimal Robot Scheduling for Web Search Engines

A robot is deployed by a Web search engine in order to maintain the currency of its data base of Web pages. This paper studies robot scheduling policies that minimize the fractions $r_i$ of time pages spend out-of-date, assuming independent Poisson page-change processes, and a general distribution for the page access time $X$. We show that, if $X$ is decreased in the increasing-convex ordering sense, then $r_i$ is decreased for all $i$ under any scheduling policy, and that, in order to minimize expected total obsolescence time of any page, the accesses to that page should be as evenly spaced in time as possible. We then investigate the problem of scheduling to minimize the cost function $\sum c_i r_i,$ where the $c_i$ are given weights proportional to the page-change rates $\mu_i$. We give a tight bound on the performance of such a policy and prove that the optimal frequency at which the robot should access page $i$ is proportional to $\ln (h_i)^{-1}$, where $h_i := {\rm E}e^{-\mu_iX}. $ Note that this reduces to being proportional to $\mu_i$ when $X$ is a constant, but not, as one might expect, when $X$ has a general distribution. Next, we evaluate randomized accessing policies whereby the choices of page access are determined by independent random samples from the distribution ${f_i}$. We show that when the weights $c_i$ in the cost function are proportional to $\mu_i$, the minimum cost is achieved when $f_i$ is proportional to $(h_i)^{-1} - 1$. Finally, we present and analyze a heuristic policy that is especially suited to the asymptotic regime of large data bases.
Large‐Scale Evaluation of log P Predictors: Local Corrections May Compensate Insufficient Accuracy and Need of Experimentally Testing Every Other Compound

A large variety of log P calculation methods failed to produce sufficient accuracy in log P prediction for two in‐house datasets of more than 96000 compounds contrary to their significantly better performances on public datasets. The minimum Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 1.02 and 0.65 were calculated for the Pfizer and Nycomed datasets, respectively, in the ‘out‐of‐box’ implementation. Importantly, the use of local corrections (LC) implemented in the ALOGPS program based on experimental in‐house log P data significantly reduced the RMSE to 0.59 and 0.48 for the Pfizer and Nycomed datasets, respectively, instantly without retraining the model. Moreover, more than 60% of molecules predicted with the highest confidence in each set had a mean absolute error (MAE) less than 0.33 log units that is only ca. 10% higher than the estimated variation in experimental log P measurements for the Pfizer dataset. Therefore, following this retrospective analysis, we suggest that the use of the predicted log P values with high confidence may eliminate the need of experimentally testing every other compound. This strategy could reduce the cost of measurements for pharmaceutical companies by a factor of 2, increase the confidence in prediction at the analog design stage of drug discovery programs, and could be extended to other ADMET properties.
Immunogenicity of a 2009 pandemic influenza virus A H1N1 vaccine, administered simultaneously with the seasonal influenza vaccine, in children receiving chemotherapy

No examination of simultaneous vaccination against pandemic H1N1 and the seasonal influenza virus strains, in children with cancer receiving chemotherapy, are yet published. We investigated the immunogenicity of a whole‐virion, inactivated, adjuvanted pandemic H1N1, and seasonal influenza vaccines administered simultaneously to children with cancer undergoing chemotherapy.
Biosequences analysis on NanoMagnet Logic

In the last decade Quantum dot Cellular Automata technology has been one of the most studied among the emerging technologies. The magnetic implementation, NanoMagnet Logic (NML), is particularly interesting as an alternative solutions to CMOS technology. The main advantages of NML circuits resides in the possibility to mix logic and memory in the same device, the expected low power consumption and the remarkable tolerance to heat and radiations. NML and QCA circuits behavior is different w.r. t. their CMOS counterparts. Consequently architecture organization must be tailored to their characteristics, and it is important to identify which applications are best suited for this technology. Our contribution reported in this paper represents a considerable step-forward in this direction. We present an optimized implementation on NML technology of an hardware accelerator for biosequences analysis. The architecture leverages the systolic array structure, which is the best organization for this technology due to the regularity of the layout. The circuit is described using a VHDL model, simulated to verify the correct functionality from the application point of view, and performance are evaluated, both in terms of speed and power consumption. Results pinpoints that NML technology with the appropriate clock solution can reach a considerable reduction in power consumption over CMOS. This analysis highlights quantitatively, and not only qualitatively, that NML logic is perfectly suited for Massively Parallel Data Analysis applications.
EXPERIENCED TEACHERS PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGIES IN CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION CONTEXTS

This paper presents a case study that investigated and compared the pedagogical strategies used by two experienced teachers with regards to language teaching in content-based instruction subjects in a secondary school in Malaysia. The respective content-based subjects are the teaching of Science in English Language and the teaching of English for Science and Technology. This study looks at both teachers’ practices and how they converge and diverge from one another. This study also explores the rationale behind the teachers’ pedagogical decision making. Examining the teachers’ actions and their retrospective reflections on them can provide invaluable insights into teachers’ underlying conceptions about teaching and learning and the tensions they experienced in teaching.
Soft computing models to identify typical meteorological days

Soft computing models are capable of identifying patterns that can characterize a ‘typical day’ in terms of its meteorological conditions. This multidisciplinary study examines data on six meteorological parameters gathered in a Spanish city. Data on these and other variables were collected for over 6 months, in 2007, from a pollution measurement station that forms part of a network of similar stations in the Spanish Autonomous Region of Castile– Leon. A comparison of the meteorological data allows relationships to be established between the meteorological variables and the days of the year. One of the main contributions of this study is the selection of appropriate data processing techniques, in order to identify typical days by analysing meteorological variables and aerosol pollutants. Two case studies are analysed in an attempt to identify a typical day in summer and in autumn.
Calculation of glomerular filtration rate expressed in mL/min from plasma cystatin C values in mg/L

Larsson A, Malm J, Grubb A, Hansson L-O. Calculation of glomerular filtration rate expressed in mL/min from plasma cystatin C values in mg/L. 2004; 64: 25-30. The Cockcroft-Gault formula is often used to calculate the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) from plasma creatinine results. In Sweden this calculation is not usually done in the laboratory, but locally in the wards. These manual calculations could cause erroneous results. In several studies plasma cystatin C has been shown to be superior to plasma creatinine for estimation of GFR. One limitation of using cystatin C as a GFR marker is that there is no conversion formula transforming cystatin C expressed as mg/L to GFR expressed as mL/ min. In this study plasma creatinine and cystatin C were compared with iohexol clearance. A stronger correlation (p< 0.0001) was found between cystatin C and iohexol clearance (r2 = 0.91) than between creatinine and iohexol clearance (r2 = 0.84). From the correlation data a formula was calculated to convert cystatin C expressed as mg/L to GFR (mL/min). The formulas y = 77.24x−1.263 (Dade Behring cystatin C calibration) or y = 99.43x−1.5837 (DakoCytomation cystatin C calibration) are used to calculate GFR expressed in mL/min from the cystatin C value in mg/L and both results are reported to the referral doctor. These formulas can provide the clinicians with reliable and readily available GFR data based on single measurements of cystatin C concentrations.
Clustering web documents based on Multiclass spectral clustering

Multiclass spectral clustering is a clustering method which has been successfully applied in image segmentation and many other aspects. In this paper, Multiclass spectral clustering is used to cluster web documents including both English and Chinese pages. Through experiments, we found that Multiclass spectral clustering can be well used in web document clustering, and the method not only works well to cluster English web documents but also works well to cluster Chinese web documents clustering. We applied our method to a web search engine, and users can get the suitable results easily by just selecting the desirable classes.
ISTI@TREC Microblog Track 2011: Exploring the Use of Hashtag Segmentation and Text Quality Ranking

In the rst year of the TREC Micro Blog track, our participation has focused on building from scratch an IR system based on the Whoosh IR library. Though the design of our system (CipCipPy) is pretty standard it includes three ad-hoc solutions for the track: (i) a dedicated indexing function for hashtags that automatically recognizes the distinct words composing an hashtag, (ii) expansion of tweets based on the title of any referred Web page, and (iii) a tweet ranking function that ranks tweets in results by their content quality, which is compared against a reference corpus of Reuters news. In this preliminary paper we describe all the components of our system, and the ecacy scored by our runs. The CipCipPy system is available under a GPL license.
Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids impair in vivo interferon- gamma responsiveness via diminished receptor signaling.

BACKGROUND A high intake of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) in mice causes impaired host resistance to Listeria monocytogenes. We wished to determine the role of interferon (IFN)-gamma signaling in this increased disease susceptibility. METHODS A feeding trial was conducted with mice unable to produce IFN-gamma (IFN-gamma KO); we provided exogenous recombinant IFN-gamma during L. monocytogenes challenge. The experimental diets were nutritionally complete and differed only in fat source: lard (devoid of n-3 PUFAs) or menhaden fish oil (rich in n-3 PUFAs). RESULTS The administration of IFN-gamma significantly enhanced bacterial clearance in IFN-gamma KO mice fed a diet devoid of n-3 PUFAs but had no effect in mice fed a diet rich in n-3 PUFAs. Ex vivo analysis of immune cells showed that n-3 PUFAs did not affect IFN-gamma receptor expression on immune cells. However, on IFN-gamma treatment, the phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 was significantly reduced in peritoneal macrophages isolated from mice fed n-3 PUFAs. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that diminished IFN-gamma signaling in murine macrophages is one mechanism by which n-3 PUFAs impair host resistance to L. monocytogenes. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a nutrient affecting IFN-gamma signaling and in vivo responsiveness to this cytokine.
Producing semantically appropriate gestures in embodied language generation

In this thesis, I address the problem of producing semantically appropriate gestures in embodied language generation. Most of the previous work on gesture in interactive systems has focused on gestural languages independent of speech content. Research on embodied language generation has directed attention to the generation of spontaneous gestures that accompany speech in face-toface interactions. Implemented systems for embodied language generation are able to test the placement and realization of gestural phenomena in relation to intonation and information structure. However, important aspects of the problem have not been fully addressed such as generating gestural forms from semantic information and deciding what semantic information should be conveyed across speech and gesture modalities. I extend, in two ways, an existing body of work on the rule-based generation of semantically appropriate gestures. First, by proposing hypotheses about the distribution of semantic information across the speech and gesture modalities and the realization of semantic information in gestural forms. Second, by building a prototype that serves as a vehicle for the exploration of some of the proposed hypotheses and experimentation with the generation of semantically appropriate gestures. Thesis Supervisor: Justine Cassell Tittle: AT&T Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
The Sasang Constitutional Types Can Act as a Risk Factor for Hypertension

It has been suggested that an approach to hypertension based on the constitutional make-up of an individual may be effective. We conducted a retrospective chart review to explore the association of Sasang constitution with hypertension. The results show that the prevalence of hypertension was highest in the Taeeum (TE) constitutional type, and that the TE constitutional type can act as an independent risk factor for hypertension (OR in TE group = 1.37 (CI 1.06–1.78) (vs. non-TE group)). This indicates that the Sasang constitutional type could explain the variability in individual susceptibilities to hypertension, suggesting a novel constitution-based approach to hypertension.
Y-ChartBasedSystemLevel PerformanceAnalysis: An M-JPEGCaseStudy

In the Artemis project an architecture workbench is being developed. One of the inputs for defining this workbench is the SPADE methodology. SPADE (Systemlevel PerformanceAnalysisand Designspace Exploration) follows the Y-chart approach; application and architecture are modeledseparately, and the mapping of the application onto the architecture is an explicit designstep. As an advantagewe can easilymodify the application, architecture, or mapping, resulting in a quick tur naround time to explore alternative systemimplementations. In this paper we intr oduceand evaluate SPADE thr ough an illustrati ve casestudy. In this casestudy westart fr om a modified M-JPEG application and map this application onto a shared memory multi-pr ocessorarchitectur e. The examplesystemis also used in the Artemis project as a dri ver and casestudy for the designand evaluation of the workbench. We define the application asa Kahn ProcessNetwork. The architecture and mapping are specifiedusingSpadearchitecture and mapping languages.Wepresent resultsof simulations for alternative architecture instancesand mappings. Keywords—systemlevel design,M-JPEG, designspaceexploration, signal processing,application modeling,architecture modeling
The Epidemiology and Clinical Features of Clostridium difficile Infection in Liver Transplant Recipients

Background Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is common after liver transplantation (LT); however, few studies have examined the risk factors, clinical manifestations, and outcomes of CDI in this population. Methods A retrospective study of adults who underwent LT between January 1, 2011, and April 4, 2013, at The Mount Sinai Hospital was conducted. Potential risk factors were evaluated via univariate and multivariable analysis to determine predictors of CDI in this population. The clinical manifestations of CDI and patient outcomes were also reviewed. Results Clostridium difficile infection occurred in 27 (14%) of 192 patients after LT. In multivariable analysis, CDI was associated with having a model for end-stage liver disease score of 20 or greater (hazards ratio, 2.90; 95% confidence interval, 1.29-6.52; P = 0.010), and receiving a LT from a living donor (hazards ratio, 3.77; 95% confidence interval, 1.47-9.67; P = 0.006). Forty-one percent of CDI cases occurred within 1 week of LT. Seven percent of patients with CDI had a serum white blood cell count greater than 12 000 cells per &mgr;L, and 26% had a temperature greater than 38.0°C. After treatment 6 (22%) patients developed CDI relapse, and all were successfully treated. No patients died of CDI after a mean follow-up time of 1.8 years; however, overall survival was significantly lower among those with CDI (78% vs 92%; P = 0.033). Conclusions Clostridium difficile infection after LT was associated with higher model for end-stage liver disease scores and receiving a LT from a living donor. Clostridium difficile infection often occurred soon after LT and was infrequently associated with leukocytosis or fever. Clostridium difficile infection in LT recipients was associated with lower overall survival.