Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gamification for Online Communities: A Case Study for Delivering Government Services

Gamification, the idea of inserting game dynamics into portals or social networks, has recently evolved as an approach to encourage active participation in online communities. For an online community to start and proceed on to a sustainable operation, it is important that members are encouraged to contribute positively and frequently. We decided to introduce gamification in an online community that we designed and developed with the Australian Government's Department of Human Services to support welfare recipients transitioning from one payment to another. We first defined a formal model of gamification and a gamification design process. In instantiating our model to the online community, we realised that our context applied a number of constraints on the gamification elements that could be introduced. In this paper, we outline the design and implementation of a gamification model for online communities and its instantiation into our context, with its specific requirements. While we cannot comment on the success of gamification to drive user engagement in our context (for lack of the possibility of a controlled experiment), we found our implementation of badges-based gamification a helpful way to provide a useful abstraction on the life of the community, providing feedback enabling us to monitor and analyze the community. We thus show how feedback provided by such gamification data has a potential to be useful to community providers to better understand the community needs and addressing them appropriately to maintain a level of engagement in the community.
A Safe and Scalable Payment Infrastructure for Trade of Electronic Content

BARTER (a Backbone ARchitecture for Trade of ElectRonic content) is a payment infrastructure that facilitates digital content trade over an open network. BARTER is designed to operate over a large-scale, global and heterogeneous communication network. The BARTER protocols address two vital requirements, neglected from existing electronic commerce systems: scalability and transactional efficiency. These protocols possess strong properties such as delivery atomicity, agreement validation and the ability to resolve several classes of disputes. BARTER's novelty is twofold: First, BARTER servers are not required to perform expensive cryptographic operations such as commitment verification; commitments are cross-verified by the parties themselves, thus reducing the overhead of online transaction processing by orders of magnitude. Consequently, BARTER can serve as an efficient online/offline clearing infrastructure. Second, BARTER integrates scalability considerations into several system components (the authentication subsystem, the account management subsystem, and the maintenance of global data) that are likely to suffer service degradation in a world-wide setting. In addressing these issues, BARTER takes into account the inherent asynchronous, unreliable, insecure and failure-prone environment assumptions. We contend that by employing service distribution, BARTER is expected to scale well, meeting the demands of a world-wide setting, over which it is intended to operate.
People Under 50 with Acquired Brain Injury Living in Residential Aged Care

Objectives: The aim of this article is to describe the characteristics, needs and preferences of people under 50 with an acquired brain injury (ABI) living in residential aged care in Victoria and examine implications for service development. Participants: Sixty-one people under 50 with an ABI living in residential aged care in the state of Victoria. Measures: Care and Needs Scale, Community Integration Questionnaire, Overt Behaviour Scale, Health of the Nation Outcome Scale - ABI Version, Role Checklist, Resident Choice Scale. Results: The younger people with ABI in this study were a diverse group with a complex range of health and support needs that were not being adequately met within residential aged care. Many people (44%) required the highest level of support, indicating they could not be left alone while 26% could be left for part of the day and overnight. Most people (81%) and their support networks indicated they would like to explore moving out from residential aged care into community accommodation settings. Conclusions: This article provides clear direction for the development of services to meet the care needs of this group, to enable them to participate in the life of the community and to pursue a lifestyle of choice.
Effects of selective inhibitors of Aurora kinases on anaplastic thyroid carcinoma cell lines.

Aurora kinases are serine/threonine kinases that play an essential role in cell division. Their aberrant expression and/or function induce severe mitotic abnormalities, resulting in either cell death or aneuploidy. Overexpression of Aurora kinases is often found in several malignancies, among which is anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC). We have previously demonstrated the in vitro efficacy of Aurora kinase inhibitors in restraining cell growth and survival of different ATC cell lines. In this study, we sought to establish which Aurora might represent the preferential drug target for ATC. To this end, the effects of two selective inhibitors of Aurora-A (MLN8237) and Aurora-B (AZD1152) on four human ATC cell lines (CAL-62, BHT-101, 8305C, and 8505C) were analysed. Both inhibitors reduced cell proliferation in a time- and dose-dependent manner, with IC50 ranges of 44.3-134.2 nM for MLN8237 and of 9.2-461.3 nM for AZD1152. Immunofluorescence experiments and time-lapse videomicroscopy yielded evidence that each inhibitor induced distinct mitotic phenotypes, but both of them prevented the completion of cytokinesis. As a result, poliploidy increased in all AZD1152-treated cells, and in two out of four cell lines treated with MLN8237. Apoptosis was induced in all the cells by MLN8237, and in BHT-101, 8305C, and 8505C by AZD1152, while CAL-62 exposed to AZD1152 died through necrosis after multiple rounds of endoreplication. Both inhibitors were capable of blocking anchorage-independent cell growth. In conclusion, we demonstrated that either Aurora-A or Aurora-B might represent therapeutic targets for the ATC treatment, but inhibition of Aurora-A appears more effective for suppressing ATC cell proliferation and for inducing the apoptotic pathway.
Pitfalls In Distributed Nonblocking Checkpointing

Coordinated checkpointing has low stable storage requirements and simplifies the recovery process by reserving a set of consistent global checkpoints. Unfortunately, most algorithms that were proposed either incurred a high communication overhead or blocked all processes. Then, a coordinated algorithm was presented which was nonblocking and which forced only a subset of all processes to participate in a checkpointing event. This algorithm was shown to create inconsistencies in some situations and new algorithms to take consistent checkpoints were proposed. However, we found that these algorithms can still result in inconsistencies when typical behavior in a distributed environment is considered, such as multiple forced checkpoints and multiple concurrent checkpoint initiations. In this paper we identify the inconsistencies that can occur and present an efficient nonblocking algorithm that collects consistent global checkpoints and avoids some of the pitfalls in distributed nonblocking checkpointing.
Efficient Algorithms for some Common Applications on Ghcc

Generalized Hypercube-Connected-Cycles (GHCC), is a challenging interconnection network, proposed earlier in the literature. In this paper, we discuss how some important, useful algorithms, like, matrix transpose, matrix multiplication and sorting can efficiently be implemented on GHCC. Matrix transpose and matrix-by-matrix multiplication of matrices of order n × n, , takes O(l) and time, respectively, on GHCC(l,m), with lml processors. Using the same number of processors, a list of ml numbers can be sorted in O(l2log3 m) time.
New Aspects on Chronic Trapezius Myalgia: Contribution of Metabolomics and Proteomics

Abstract Several hypotheses regarding the underlying mechanisms and the maintenance behind chronic work-related musculoskeletal disorders have been presented. Chronic low load work and psychosocial stress is believed to be the underlying causes to these pain conditions. The recent application of comprehensive screening methods: omnics methods; to this field of research could contribute to current knowledge regarding the pathophysiology of these disorders. The pathophysiological mechanisms behind chronic trapezius myalgia are discussed in the context of new findings obtained with proteomic and metabolomic methods. Proteins and metabolites which differ in abundance between healthy muscle and muscle suffering from chronic trapezius myalgia are presented. Primarily, the pathways and effects of the proteins and metabolites found in three recently published papers are discussed. Proteomics and metabolomics are efficient screening methods enabling the presentation of potential biomarkers and pathophysiological mechanisms explaining the pathophysiology of chronic work-related trapezius myalgia. The previous findings detecting systematic differences of proteins and metabolites when comparing chronic myalgic muscle to healthy muscle, indicating a higher glycogen metabolism, increased muscle turnover and increased neuronal signalling in the myalgic muscle, are discussed in this review.
Account of an outbreak of malignant catarrhal fever in Murrah buffaloes in the Minas Gerais state, Brazil

Abstract An outbreak of Malignant Catarrhal Fever (MCF) resulting in death of 5 buffaloes in the same farm. Four buffaloes died 10-15 days after the beginning of the signals and the another one was euthanized in extremus, after similar signals. Histopathological examination showed lesions suggestive to MCF in buffaloes such as epicarditis and multifocal miocarditis with infiltrates of mononuclear lymphocytes and macrophages besides lymphocytic interstitial pneumonia. PCR revealed 98% homology between an amplified fragment obtained from the CNS of the buffaloes and specific sequences of OHV-2. Diagnosis of MCF was firmed in epidemiological, clinical, gross and histopathological findings and in results of a semi-nested PCR.
Comparison of Stemming and N-gram Matching for Term Conflation in Arabic Text

A stem in Arabic is a root verb form combined with derivational morphemes but with affixes removed. One part of this paper is to repeat the Mixed Stemming experiment, that chooses the use of a word, a stem, or a root for a query term based upon which form has the highest average inverse document frequency value, using more documents and queries. A consistency result has been obtained. The root with weighting method was the superior. The mixed stemming improved binary weighting search results in all cases but did not increase performance over weighted stems or roots. N-gram matching is widely used for term conflation when searching the World Wide Web for something without knowing whether it is stored as singular or plural, as a compound or in the form of several words, in old or new spelling or possibly in wrong orthography. Part two of this paper reports a comparison of Stemming and N-gram matching. The Stem-NGram-Stem Search outperforms (at recall 0.4 and above) the Digrams method when both the queries and documents words are not stemmed. It also suggests that the (Stem-NGram-Stem) Search approach outperforms (at recall 0.4 and above) the Trigrams method (Stem-NGram-Word) when the queries words are stemmed and documents words are not stemmed. The results also suggest that the Trigrams method (Stem-NGram-Word) outperforms the Digrams method when both the queries and documents words are not stemmed. All of the proposed N-gram methods outperform the Word, Stem, and Root index methods for Binary Weighting scheme.
Advanced Technologies for Information Access

This paper briefly describes Toshiba Knowledge Media Laboratory's recent research efforts for effective information retrieval and access. Firstly, I will mention the main research topics that are being tackled by our information access group, including document retrieval, speech-input/multimedia question answering, and evaluation metrics. Secondly, I will focus on the problem of cross-language information retrieval and access, and describe a system called BRIDJE (Bi-directional Retriever/Information Distiller for Japanese and English), which achieved many gold-medal performances at the recent NTCIR (a.k.a. "Asian TREC") workshop. Finally, I will conclude the paper by mentioning some unsolved problems and suggesting possible directions for future Information Access research.
Integrating Temporal Distribution Information into Event-Based Summarization

In this paper, we present event-based summarization and investigate whether it can be enhanced by integrating temporal distribution information. We refer to events as event terms and the associated event elements. Event terms represent actions themselves and event elements are commonly those verb arguments. After anchoring events on the time line, we explore two statistical measures, i.e. tf*idf and x2, for evaluating the importance of events on each day. Summary sentences are selected based on the weights of the events contained in them, in either sequential or round robin order. Experiments show that the combination of time-based tf*idf weighting scheme and sequential sentence selection strategy can improve the quality of summaries significantly. The improvement can be attributed to its capability of representing the trend of news topics based on event temporal distributions.
Enumeration of Contour Correspondence

With the recent advances in computed tomography and magnetic resonance devices, cross-sectional images are now commonly used for diagnosis. However, how contours between cross-sections should be connected is often ambiguous. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that enumerates all possible cases of the correspondence of contours. This is useful for achieving fully automatic interpolation of contours, although our current implementation still requires some degree of manual interaction.
Progression-free survival as a surrogate endpoint in advanced neuroendocrine neoplasms.

In oncology clinical trials, overall survival (OS) is considered the gold standard outcome measure. In phase III trials for neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs), however, progression-free survival (PFS) is more frequently used, as NENs are relatively rare and indolent neoplasms. But this surrogacy of PFS for OS has never been systematically validated. We, therefore, performed a literature-based analysis of phase II and III trials for NENs to evaluate the correlation between PFS and OS in NENs treated with medical treatment. We identified phase II and III clinical trials of medical treatment for advanced NENs based on a systematic electronic search using MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. A total of 20 trials were identified, and 2530 patients and 30 treatment arms were included in the analysis. There was a statistically significant relationship between PFS and OS (rs , 0.587; 95% confidence interval, 0.249-0.925). Conversely, the objective response rate was not significantly correlated with OS. The results of subgroup analyses indicated that the correlation between PFS and OS was higher for study arms that prohibited concomitant therapy with somatostatin analogues than for those that permitted it. The results of the present analysis indicate that PFS is significantly correlated with OS, and suggest that PFS is an acceptable surrogate for OS in clinical trials for NENs.
Surface Camera (Scam) Light Field Rendering

In this article we present a new variant of the light field representation that supports improved image reconstruction by accommodating sparse correspondence information. This places our representation somewhere between a pure, two-plane parameterized, light field and a lumigraph representation, with its continuous geometric proxy. Our approach factors the rays of a light field into one of two separate classes. All rays consistent with a given correspondence are implicitly represented using a new auxiliary data structure, which we call a surface camera, or scam. The remaining rays of the light field are represented using a standard two-plane parameterized light field. We present an efficient rendering algorithm that combines ray samples from scams with those from the light field. The resulting image reconstructions are noticeably improved over that of a pure light field.
A New Noise Removing Algorithm

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for removing Gaussian noise from natural images while preserving important details for further processing. Similar patches appear frequently in an image. Our algorithm is based on this high redundancy in natural images. Our initial step is to perform an image segmentation by a constrained quad-tree-split-and-merge technique. Then for each patch, using an extended SSD, we identify all similar patches in the image and recalculate the patch by summing up a weighted copy of each similar patch. Since the mean of white noise is zero, the final image will be noise free and important details are preserved. Experimental comparisons of Wiener Filter, Wavelet Threshold Methods and our method will be carried out by using different types of images. The result shows that our method is more efficient in both noise removing and detail preserving.
Local Laplacian Detail Learning for Face Aging Manipulation

Face aging is a challenging work in image processing and computer animation field. In this paper, a novel local image Laplacian differential method is proposed to learn this complex face transformation. Firstly, together with the facial feature points correspondence, we extract the aging facial details from example face and apply to the target one by a global and a local Laplacian skin aging model respectively, and the latter makes the results more realistic in our experiment. Then, the skin color and hair style adjustments are carried out to simulate the aging process completely, making the results look more competitive and natural. Our experiment shows that our method is robust and appreciable.
A Theoretical Framework for Matrix-Based Feature Extraction Algorithms with its Application to Image Recognition

Recently proposed matrix-based methods, two-dimensional Principal Component Analysis (2DPCA), two-dimensional Linear Discriminant Analysis (2DLDA) and two-dimensional Locality Preserving Projections (2DLPP) have been shown to be effective ways to avoid the problems of high dimensionality and small sample sizes that are associated with vector-based methods. In this paper, we propose a general theoretical framework for matrix-based feature extraction algorithms from the point of view of graph embedding. Our framework can be applied to extend two recently proposed vector-based algorithms, i.e. Unsupervised Discriminant Projection (UDP) and Marginal Fisher Analysis (MFA) algorithms, to their matrix-based versions. Further, our framework can also be used as a platform to generate new matrix-based feature extraction algorithms by designing meaningful graphs, e.g. two-dimensional Discriminant Embedding Analysis (2DDEA) in this paper. It is shown that 2DLDA is actually a special case of the 2DDEA method. Experime.
A Point-Based Asynchronous Remote Visualization Framework for Real-Time Virtual Reality

High speed interactive virtual reality (VR) exploration of scientific datasets is a challenge when the visualization is computationally expensive. This paper presents a point-based remote visualization pipeline for real-time virtual reality (VR) with asynchronous client-server coupling. Steered by the client-end frustum request, the remote server samples the original dataset into 3D point samples and sends them back to the client for view updating. From every view updating frame, the client incrementally builds up a point-based geometry under an octree-based space partition hierarchy. At every view-reconstruction frame, the client continuously splats the available points onto the screen with efficient occlusion culling and view-dependent level of detail (LOD) control. An experimental visualization framework with a server-end computer cluster and a client-end head-tracked autostereo VR desktop display is used to visualize large-scale mesh datasets and ray-traced 4D Julia set datasets. The overall performance of the VR view reconstruction is about 15 fps and independent of the original dataset complexity.
Texture Characterization Using Wsfs and Wcfs

Texture analysis plays an important role in many tasks, ranging from remote sensing to medical imaging and query by content in large image data bases. The main difficulty of texture analysis in the past was the lack of adequate tools to characterize different scales of textures effectively. The development in multi-resolution analysis such as Gabor and wavelet transform help to overcome this difficulty. This paper describes the texture characterization system using (i) Wavelet Statistical Features (WSF) obtained from 3-level Discrete Wavelet Transformed (DWT) images, (ii) Wavelet Co-occurrence Features (WCF) of one level wavelet transformed images in detail.
Changes during hospital treatment in patients with SMI

Severe mental illness (SMI) is associated with low levels of functioning, severe symptomatology, and low levels of physical activity and quality of life. This study explores changes in these variables during hospital treatment in a sample with SMI. Participants were 11 patients with SMI who completed assessments at admission and discharge from hospital. Changes with regard to physical activity levels, global functioning, psychiatric symptoms, and quality of life during treatment were investigated with non-parametric tests for related samples. Participants achieved higher functional status and experienced reduced depression during treatment. There was a trend of increased quality of life during treatment, but no changes were detected on other measures. Physical activity levels were unchanged from admission to discharge. Efforts to increase physical activity levels among patients with SMI should have a long-term perspective, as significant changes may not occur during hospital treatment.