Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting and Tracking Significant Events for Individuals on Twitter by Monitoring the Evolution of Twitter Followership Networks

People publish tweets on Twitter to share everything from global news to their daily life. Abundant user-generated content makes Twitter become one of the major channels for people to obtain information about real-world events. Event detection techniques help to extract events from massive amounts of Twitter data. However, most existing techniques are based on Twitter information streams, which contain plenty of noise and polluted content that would affect the accuracy of the detecting result. In this article, we present an event discovery method based on the change of the user’s followers, which can detect the occurrences of significant events relevant to the particular user. We divide these events into categories according to the positive or negative effect on the specific user. Further, we observe the evolution of individuals’ followership networks and analyze the dynamics of networks. The results show that events have different effects on the evolution of different features of Twitter followership networks. Our findings may play an important role for realizing how patterns of social interaction are impacted by events and can be applied in fields such as public opinion monitoring, disaster warning, crisis management, and intelligent decision making.
Understanding Collaborative Software Development: An Interview Study

In globally distributed software development, many software developers have to collaborate and deal with issues of collaboration. Although collaboration is challenging, collaborative development produces better software than any developer could produce alone. Unlike previous work which focuses on the proposal and evaluation of models and tools to support collaborative work, this paper presents an interview study aiming to understand (i) the motivations, (ii) how collaboration happens, and (iii) the challenges and barriers of collaborative software development. After interviewing twelve experienced software developers from GitHub, we found different types of collaborative contributions, such as in the management of requests for changes. Our analysis also indicates that the main barriers for collaboration are related to non-technical, rather than technical issues.CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Open source model; Programming teams.
Anaesthesia for Reptiles

THIS paper describes the administration of anaesthetics to certain Australian snakes and lizards. Since the literature is almost silent upon the subject, the writers are led to report their limited experience, both for the information of others and as an amusing byway of anaesthesia. The National Museum of Victoria is assembling a representative display of casts in latex of Australian reptiles. These casts must be prepared from living specimens, because those prepared from dead ones are not satisfactory. Further, if the reptiles die, the artist who colors the casts cannot reproduce the normally iridescent hues of life. The Museum's original technique was to place in the reptile's box a swab heavily charged with ether. In about an hour, when the creature had become inert, it was removed and eveloped in plaster-of-Paris. Venomous snakes survived this process more often than not; non-venomous snakes and lizards succumbed without exception. Many choice specimens were thus lost and, with them, the opportunity of coloring their casts from life. The Museum therefore decided to enlist the aid of an anaesthetist. The latter consulted the Departments of Pharmacology and Physiology at the University and searched the literature of anaesthetics for the past decade; he found, however, scarcely any practical data. Experimentation had therefore to be carried out from the beginning. This paper gives its results.
Does Gender Moderate the Relationship among Festival Attendees' Motivation, Perceived Value, Visitor Satisfaction, and Electronic Word-of-Mouth?

Festivals are experiential products heavily depending on the recommendations of previous visitors. With the power of social media growing, understanding the antecedents of positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intentions of festival attendees is immensely beneficial for festival organizers to better promote their festivals and control negative publicity. However, there is still limited research regarding eWOM intentions in the festival context. Thus, this study aims to fill such a gap by investigating the relationships among festival attendees’ enjoyment seeking motivation, perceived value, visitor satisfaction, and eWOM intention in a local festival setting. Additionally, the moderating role of gender was tested as it is one of the most important demographic variables to show individual differences in behavioral intentions. The results of structural equation modeling showed a positive effect of enjoyment seeking motivation on perceived value, visitor satisfaction, and eWOM intention. Moreover, gender differences in eWOM intention and a full mediating effect of visitor satisfaction between perceived value and eWOM intention for female respondents were revealed. The findings of this study extend the existing festival literature and provide insights for strategically organizing and promoting festivals to generate more positive eWOM which can be utilized as an effective marketing tool and a feedback channel.
Building Virtual 3D City Model for Smart Cities Applications: A Case Study on Campus Area of the University of Novi Sad

The Smart Cities data and applications need to replicate, as faithfully as possible, the state of the city and to simulate possible alternative futures. In order to do this, the modelling of the city should cover all aspects of the city that are relevant to the problems that require smart solutions. In this context, 2D and 3D spatial data play a key role, in particular 3D city models. One of the methods for collecting data that can be used for developing such 3D city models is Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), a technology that has provided opportunities to generate large-scale 3D city models at relatively low cost. The collected data is further processed to obtain fully developed photorealistic virtual 3D city models. The goal of this research is to develop virtual 3D city model based on airborne LiDAR surveying and to analyze its applicability toward Smart Cities applications. It this paper, we present workflow that goes from data collection by LiDAR, through extract, transform, load (ETL) transformations and data processing to developing 3D virtual city model and finally discuss its future potential usage scenarios in various fields of application such as modern ICT-based urban planning and 3D cadaster. The results are presented on the case study of campus area of the University of Novi Sad.
New Native Trap-Jaw Ant, Strumigenys Smith1, from the Neotropical Excisa Species Group Discovered in a Disjunct Region and Climate on the Colorado Plateau

Abstract. In the United States are 37 endemic Strumigenys ant species belonging to a single temperate and recently radiated Nearctic clade formerly classified as Pyramica (non-trap jaw Strumigenys Smith1). We report the discovery of a new unrelated and morphologically distinct endemic Nearctic Strumigenys we described as Strumigenys superstes sp. nov. known only from a single queen collected in a pitfall trap at high altitude in northern Arizona. In comparing Strumigenys superstes sp. nov. morphology with queens of other closely related species, we showed Strumigenys superstes sp. nov. is the only temperate member of the otherwise tropical (Panamanian) clade of short-mandibled trap jaw species formerly belonging to the genus Glamyromyrmex (now forming the Strumigenys excisa species-group).
Differences in life history characteristics among three sympatric evolutionary species of the Rotaria rotatoria complex

The Bdelloidea rotifer, a kind of asexually microscopic invertebrate, is the largest Metazoan group that reproduces only through parthenogenesis. Here the potential evolutionary species composition was analyzed using a coalescent approach to infer independently evolving entities from a phylogenetic tree obtained from cytochrome oxidase I sequences. Three clones (HX4, HX8 and HX19) of Bdelloidea Rotaria rotatoria were selected to be the representatives of three sympatric putative cryptic taxa for detecting the effects of temperature (24, 28 and 32 ℃) on their life history traits. The results showed that the responses of life table parameters to increasing temperature were different among the three evolving entities. Evolutionary species, temperatures and their interaction significantly affected all life history parameters except that evolutionary species did not significantly affect the durations of post-reproductive period and mean lifespan. In addition, the interaction of evolutionary species and temperatures did not significantly affect the durations of post-reproductive period, offspring production or net reproductive rate. No matter what the evolutionary species was, the age-specific survival curves tended to decrease earlier and more quickly, and the peak of age-specific fecundity curves appeared earlier with increasing temperature. The three potential cryptic R. rotatoria taxa adopted variable life history strategies, low reproduction and high survivorship at low temperature, as well as high reproduction and low survivorship at high temperature. The similar adaptation abilities of HX4, HX8 and HX19 to water temperatures could be the best explanation for their coexistence in the subtropical shallow pond at a high temperature.
Introduction to Big Data Computing for Geospatial Applications

The convergence of big data and geospatial computing has brought challenges and opportunities to GIScience with regards to geospatial data management, processing, analysis, modeling, and visualization. This special issue highlights recent advancements in integrating new computing approaches, spatial methods, and data management strategies to tackle geospatial big data challenges and meanwhile demonstrates the opportunities for using big data for geospatial applications. Crucial to the advancements highlighted here is the integration of computational thinking and spatial thinking and the transformation of abstract ideas and models to concrete data structures and algorithms. This editorial first introduces the background and motivation of this special issue followed by an overview of the ten included articles. Conclusion and future research directions are provided in the last section.
A Synopsis of Neotropical Plukenetia (Euphorbiaceae) including Two New Species

A synopsis of the eleven neotropical species of Plukenetia (Euphorbiaceae) is given. The genus Plukenetia is redefined to include the neotropical monotypic genera Eleutherostigma and Vigin (previously known as Fragariopsis). As treated here Plukenetia may be distinguished from all other members of the tribe Plukenetieae by its four-carpellate ovary. Two new species, P. supraglandulosa from French Guiana and the Brazilian state of Amapa and P. stipellata from Mexico and Central America, are described and illustrated. Plukenetia supraglandulosa is closely allied with P. penninervia and P. multiglandulosa and differs in the presence of scattered laminar glands on the upper leaf surface and longer inflorescences. The three species share a very similar androecium of dimorphic stamens, which is correctly described for the first time. Plukenetia stipellata differs from the closely related South American and West Indian species, P. volubilis, by its stipellate leaf blade base, shorter styles and longer slender stamens. Two new combinations, P. serrata and P. lehmanniana, are proposed. A key to the 11 species in the Neotropics is provided.
Larvae of migratory fish (Teleostei: Ostariophysi) in the lotic remnant of the Paraná River in Brazil

Fish larvae and adults are morphologically distinct from each other and have different ecological requirements. Research on the dynamics of ichthyoplankton provides valuable information about the early stages of the life cycle of fish. This study analyzed the temporal and spatial distribution of the larval stages of three migratory species - Salminus brasiliensis (Cuvier, 1816), Prochilodus lineatus (Valenciennes, 1836) and Pseudoplatystoma corruscans (Agassiz, 1829) - to identify possible spawning areas in the last lotic remnant of the upper Parana River, in the Brazilian territory. A total of 26 points were sampled monthly from October 2003 to November 2004. The PERMANOVA detected significant differences between the months only for S. brasiliensis (Pseudo-F = 3.88, p = 0.0021) and P. corruscans (Pseudo-F = 3.35, p = 0.004). Among the environmental variables, temperature was the most important and the Mantel test detected a significant correlation between temperature and the densities, only for P. lineatus (r = 0.09, p = 0.03). The species in our data chose for spawning tributaries that are not dammed, of which most are outside conservation areas. Therefore, recruitment, maintenance and possible actions aiming to recover the stocks of these species are dependent on the conservation of tributaries and floodplain lakes in the region, in addition to monitoring to prevent fishing during the reproductive period.
The Spirit of the Cloud: The ?New Jerusalem' as a metaphor for social experiences of virtual technologies

Over the past centuries, the city of Jerusalem has been a centre for social and spiritual experiences of diverse communities separated from their homes and cultures. The crusaders notion of a 'New Jerusalem'; the physical reconstruction of the holy city of Jerusalem in Europe has been reversed and implemented through remote communities who moved to Jerusalem from overseas and reconstructed their home and places of worship. This project aims to express and enhance the dialectical relationship between diverse geographical locations, manifested through lost and reborn communities, the old and the New Jerusalem. Two very different, yet historically linked test cases are explored: The reconstructed Synagogue of the lost community of Conegliano Veneto, Italy, and the Kidane Mehret Ethiopian Church. Both located today in Jerusalem. Through the use of advanced photogrammetry, we attempt to create an emotional experience, transcending time and space and intensifying the complex experience of life in a home away from home. The two structures are recreated as 3D point clouds, enhanced by sounds of prayer and blended with historical imagery. The relationship between technology and meaning can be seen as an extension of the age-old mind-body problem. That is, how the physical and technological process may influence emotion and the subjective experience. The 'Spirit of the Cloud' attempts to bridge this gap by offering a personal encounter, which transcends the objectivity of technology and elevates the subject into a personal spiritual voyage. This is attempted by providing an immersive multi-sensory experience, combining eye, ear and physical interaction. Two integral components contribute towards this: The virtual reality headset and the point cloud audio-visual experience, These aim to create a spiritual voyage, where one may wander at will and experience the atmosphere of a twilight zone, bound neither by space nor time, yet strongly attached to both. The paper outlines the considerations, limitations, and solutions undertaken in the digital recreation of the structures. Likewise, it explores the process of fusing the technical challenge with the desired emotional impact on the user.
Intelligent Adversary Placements for Privacy Evaluation in VANET

Safety applications in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) often require vehicles to share information such as current position, speed, and vehicle status on a regular basis. This information can be collected to obtain private information about vehicles/drivers, such as home or office locations and frequently visited places, creating serious privacy vulnerabilities. The use of pseudonyms, rather than actual vehicle IDs, can alleviate this problem and several different Pseudonym Management Techniques (PMTs) have been proposed in the literature. These PMTs are typically evaluated assuming a random placement of attacking stations. However, an adversary can utilize knowledge of traffic patterns and PMTs to place eavesdropping stations in a more targeted manner, leading to an increased tracking success rate. In this paper, we propose two new adversary placement strategies and study the impact of intelligent adversary placement on tracking success using different PMTs. The results indicate that targeted placement of attacking stations, based on traffic patterns, road type, and knowledge of PMT used, can significantly increase tracking success. Therefore, it is important to take this into consideration when developing PMTs that can protect vehicle privacy even in the presence of targeted placement techniques.
AN INDEX OF WINTER WEATHER SEVERITY FOR NORTHERN DEER1

The relative severity of winter climate for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can be determined by using rather simple and inexpensive equipment to measure the principal stressors, air chill and snow hazard. A rating for air chill is derived with a specially designed chillometer described in this report. Depth of the snow pack and its supporting quality, obtained with a compaction gauge, yield the snow's hazard rating. Respective air chill and snow hazard ratings are summed to compute a weekly severity index. The cumulative total of these values constitutes the seasonal score. Trials with this system in Michigan's Upper Peninsula indicate that it provides a reliable means for judging the physical welfare of yarded deer; hence, their probable mortality rate can be predicted through inspec- tion of collected data as winter progresses. Moderate to heavy deer losses occurred during winters in which the season's severity index exceeded a value of 100 among the various stations across the peninsula.
Development and evaluation of a real-time analysis method for free-description questionnaire responses

One of the challenges of conducting collaborative and interactive classes using ICT is developing a highly functional class support system. In this study, we report a questionnaire response analysis system (QRAS) that can classify and search students’ opinions (questionnaire responses) in class in real time. The QRAS obtains distributed representations of questionnaire responses on the basis of Wikipedia Entity Vectors and implements a hierarchical/non-hierarchical clustering function and a search function, which searches for response sentences containing similar content. In addition, we add a function to determine the polarity of free-description questionnaire responses on the basis of the Japanese Sentiment Polarity Dictionary to the QRAS. The QRAS is educational support software that can be very useful for both teachers and students because it can classify and display all students’ opinions and statuses of understanding in real time from free-description questionnaire responses.
A simple ground segmentation method for LiDAR 3D point clouds

With benefits from wide-range detection and accurate measurements, LiDAR has been widely studied in the field of autonomous driving. Yet many challenges remain in modern LiDAR 3D point clouds processing algorithms. One is ground segmentation due to the real-time requirement dealing with huge input data from LiDAR. In this study, we propose a method to separate ground points from a point cloud in a hybrid way by adopting dynamic section division, height-based conditional filter, and multi-lines linear regression. Where, physical characteristics of LiDAR mounted on a vehicle have been introduced in the dynamic section division. Thereafter, we raise a conditional filter algorithm for filtering outliers of point clouds, and use multi-lines linear regression to generate the ground skeleton. In the end, the qualitative and quantitative experiments validate the performance by using two datasets and indicate that our proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods on KITTI in terms of accuracy 94.1% and runtime 432ms. The source code is publicly available under https://github.com/0-0cj/sgs
An Overview of Efficient Interconnection Networks for Deep Neural Network Accelerators

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have shown significant advantages in many domains, such as pattern recognition, prediction, and control optimization. The edge computing demand in the Internet-of-Things (IoTs) era has motivated many kinds of computing platforms to accelerate DNN operations. However, due to the massive parallel processing, the performance of the current large-scale artificial neural network is often limited by the huge communication overheads and storage requirements. As a result, efficient interconnection and data movement mechanisms for future on-chip artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators are worthy of study. Currently, a large body of research aims to find an efficient on-chip interconnection to achieve low-power and high-bandwidth DNN computing. This paper provides a comprehensive investigation of the recent advances in efficient on-chip interconnection and design methodology of the DNN accelerator design. First, we provide an overview of the different interconnection methods on the DNN accelerator. Then, the interconnection methods on the non-ASIC DNN accelerator will be discussed. On the other hand, with the flexible interconnection, the DNN accelerator can support different computing flow, which increases the computing flexibility. With this motivation, reconfigurable DNN computing with flexible on-chip interconnection will be investigated in this paper. Finally, we investigate the emerging interconnection technologies (e.g., in/near-memory processing) for the DNN accelerator design. This paper systematically investigates the interconnection networks in modern DNN accelerator designs. With this article, the readers are able to: 1) understand the interconnection design for DNN accelerators; 2) evaluate DNNs with different on-chip interconnection; 3) familiarize with the trade-offs under different interconnections.
Adaptive OS Switching for Improving Availability During Web Traffic Surges: A Feasibility Study

Web services have seen early adoption and rapid growth with the introduction of various web system frameworks, and not only large companies but also smaller businesses or individuals can provide their own web services offering access to their products, entertainment, and information. Therefore, as the number of Internet users increases, especially with the spread of smartphones, even relatively small web service infrastructure need to have both high access performance and availability, although the cost of additional computational resources and redundant servers may be hard to bear depending on the load. We focus on the fact that the performance characteristics may differ depending on the internal implementation of the operating system (OS), even when the available computing resources are the same. This paper investigates the possibility of developing a system that achieves both high access performance and availability of the web server by dynamically switching the OS on which the web server is running, without requiring additional computing resources or using redundant servers. This paper identifies the differences between Linux and FreeBSD in terms of network processing and describes the mechanism of process migration among heterogeneous OSes to switch the OSes. It then demonstrates the feasibility of our approach with experimental results on the performance characteristics and load tolerance of a web server in operation when the OSes are dynamically switched.