Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maintaining and Extending MOOC Clickstream Curation in the MOOC-Learner-Project

Development and career advancement with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) partly depends on our ability to understand learners’ behavior in terms of how they navigate content. A primary challenge for this analysis is to work from a massive, time-oriented stream of click events that a MOOC platform logs as multiple students work simultaneously. To support sharing analytics the MOOCdb project provides MOOCDB translation software that curates such streams into a new format that makes it easier for each learner, type of learning activity, or a learner trajectory to be retrieved [4]. As MOOC learning design improves and platforms become more advanced, maintaining this and other MOOC software is a significant task [1]. “Code rot” sets in [3]. Software becomes unstable (e.g. hard to change without introducing bugs), test cases are neglected, and/or documentation become out of step with enhancements. For example, the moocRP [5] software has out of date install instructions and the software libraries and MOOCDB translation software does not support new platform logs, nor does it support more recent Coursera releases. We analyze the code rot and related code quality measures of the existing MOOCDB translation software of the MOOCdb project. Results using industry standard software tools allow us to confirm intuition that rot has set in and to confirm what users report: it is hard to understand or change. We then describe how we have subsequently maintained and extended it, culminating in the release of a new version called MOOC-Learner-Curated (MLC). Understandability and stability have been addressed by creating a short software test path that enables a Test Driven Design (TDD) methodology that relies upon the quick and frequent client/user feedback this software project could expect. For reproducibility, a metadata table is added that contains the commit hash of the translation software used to generate the MySQL data. This provides metadata for developers to help debug issues with MLC. The commit hash also indicates the necessary versioning information to reproduce the same instance with the MLC. Extendability is demonstrated with VisMOOC [6] extensions for modules that implement specific functionality. The extensions allow innovations for learner analysis while they still separate and maintain the goal of creating a sufficiently generic MOOC schema to encapsulate the most important kinds of data. To achieve these upgrades, we used the LCCA (Legacy Code Change Algorithm) [2]. Our evaluation of improvement is based on the rate at which issues were resolved during different stages of LCCA. We report metrics associated with: 1. Understandability 2. Stability 3. Extendability, based on resistance to change 4. Reproducibility. MLC saw much more frequent changes in response to discovered issues once the project was significantly refactored and restructured. Stability is greatly increased with the addition of a test harness to the core modules.
OECD review: December 2011 ENDOCRINE DISRUPTORS AND THE EPIGENOME

1. The mechanism by which the group of chemicals referred to as „endocrine disruptors‟ exert their phenotypic effects remains only partially understood, but there is emerging evidence that dysregulation of the cell‟s epigenome is involved. In the last decade, it has become clear that the emerging field of epigenetics is of significant relevance for both the study and practice of toxicology and safety assessment. At the research level, these efforts currently aim to elucidate the involvement of chemical-induced epigenetic changes in adverse health effects, as well as to the exploitation of epigenetics particularly in the area of in vitro and in vivo modeling. While there have been plenty of reports linking endocrine disruptors with phenotypic abnormalities in wildlife, there are currently no publications describing epigenetic studies in wildlife undergoing these exposures. While wildlife and ecotoxicological aspects are not specifically addressed in this chapter, some of the models discussed may be relevant. This chapter reviews our current understanding of the intersection of these two fields of research and proposes avenues of exploration encompassing epigenetic information that will form the foundation for definitive testing of this relationship and provide a basis for future practical applications for regulatory safety assessment.
Statistical Romanization for Abugida Scripts: Data and Experiment on Khmer and Burmese

Linguistically, romanization is the task of transforming a non-Latin writing system into Latin script. It is a language-specific task in natural language processing (NLP). Despite standard romanization systems, conventional transcription methods are applied prevalently in many languages. The spellings are thus inconsistent and complicated in some cases. Consequently, statistical approaches are required for an efficient solution on this task. We focus on the name romanization for languages using abugida scripts. Different from an alphabetic system, in an abugida system, consonant letters stand for a syllable with an implicit inherent vowel, and diacritics modify consonant letters to change or depress the inherent vowel. We designed annotation schemes to establish a precise, consistent, and monotonic correspondence between the two different writing systems on grapheme level, through which various machine learning approaches are facilitated. Specifically, we collect and manually align 7, 658 and 2, 335 person name romanization instances for Khmer and Burmese (Myanmar), respectively. Both languages are with limited resources and NLP studies. Experimental results demonstrate that standard approaches of conditional random fields (CRF) and support vector machine (SVM) supervised by the manually annotated data achieve high precision in romanization. The annotated data have been released under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.
The Strategies for Increasing Cordycepin Production of Cordyceps Militaris by Liquid Fermentation

The aims of this review are to describe the biosynthetic pathway of cordycepin and summarize the strategies for increasing cordycepin production of Cordyceps militaris by liquid fermentation. In recent years, researchers made remarkable progress in cordycepin production. They focused their attention on the three aspects to improve cordycepin production: strain improving, optimizing ingredients of medium and optimizing culture conditions. This review might be helpful for understanding of cordycepin boisynthesis and increasing the production of cordycepin.
Title: Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Alignment Mechanisms for Non-Destructive Evaluation Type of report: Final Report

As proposed in the original proposal, we developed an innovative method to assemble extremely large number of electronic circuit components based on individual single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) as fast as conventional microfabrication processes. The method is based on a surface templated assembly strategy where the surface of the solid substrate is first functionalized with self-assembled monolayer molecules via dip-pen nanolithography and microcontact printing, and the assembly of SWCNTs is directed onto the molecular patterns via specific interactions between surface functional groups and SWCNTs in the solution. Utilizing this method, we were able to cover a large substrate area (1 cm 2) with millions of SWCNT-based circuit components in a short time period. This result removes one of the major bottlenecks in SWCNT-based electronic applications and allows us to envision integrated SWCNT-based devices.
Temporary Shocks and Persistent Effects in the Urban System: Evidence from British Cities after the U.S. Civil War

Urban economies are often heavily reliant on a small number of dominant industries, leaving them vulnerable to negative industry-specific shocks. This paper analyzes the long-run impacts of one such event: the large, temporary, and industry-specific shock to the British cotton textile industry caused by the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), which dramatically reduced supplies of raw cotton. Because the British cotton textile industry was heavily concentrated in towns in Northwest England, I compare patterns in these cotton towns to other English cities. I find that the shock had a persistent negative effect on the level of city population lasting at least 35 years with no sign of diminishing. Decomposing the effect by industry, I show that the shock to cotton textiles was transmitted to other local firms, leading to increased bankruptcies and long-run reductions in employment. This transmission occurred primarily through the link to capital suppliers, such as machinery and metal-goods producers. Roughly half of the reduction in city-level employment growth was due to the impact on industries other than cotton textiles.
Formulation and Evaluation of Fast Dissolving Tablet Containing Vilazodone Nanocrystals for Solubility and Dissolution Enhancement Using Soluplus: In vitro-In vivo Study

Major problem to the development of highly effective formulation is the poor aqueous solubility of many drugs which affects stability and bioavailability of drug formulation. There is need of systematic formulation approaches to make poorly soluble drugs bioavailable. The objective of present investigation is to increase the solubility and dissolution rate of Vilazodone (VLZ) an antidepressant drug by preparing its nanoparticles using graft copolymer Soluplus and polyvinyl pyrrolidone K-30 (PVP K 30) by evaporative precipitation into aqueous solution method. The prepared nanoparticles were characterized by FTIR, DSC, XRD, SEM, Particle size by DLS and saturation solubility. The nanoparticles showed remarkable increase in the aqueous saturation solubility i.e., NP1, NP2, NP3 and NP4 shows 4.4, 4.6, 7.7 and 7.8 folds respectively increase in aqueous solubility as compared to VLZ. The nanoparticles NP4 batch with highest solubility is converted into fast dissolving tablet. The tablets were evaluated for different parameters and found to possess more dissolution (89.386% release) as compared to pure drug (51.652%). The rise in solubility and dissolution may be due to either increase in surface area due to reduction in particle size or micelles formation by Soluplus and reduction in crystallinity of drug. In vivo study reveals that optimized Vilazodone nanoparticles (VLZNP) elicited significant antidepressant like activity.
Judicial Sentiments and Social Attitudes : Evidence from U . S . Circuit Courts

This paper provides an empirical analysis of how the sentiments expressed in judicial rulings affect social attitudes in the local jurisdiction. We use natural language processing methodologies to extrapolate judges’ preferences towards specific target groups from the text of U.S. appellate court opinions. To provide causal estimates we use an instrumental variables strategy by exploiting the random assignment of judges to cases and the evidence that judges’ characteristics are good predictors of their expressed sentiments. In reduced form estimates, we find that judges born in the 1940s (who came of age in the 1960s) have a significant suasive impact on social attitudes toward courts, congress, police, and labor unions. In 2SLS estimates, we find that judge writing style has heterogeneous impacts. When judges write approvingly of whites, police, and congress, there is a backlash effect. When judges write approvingly of the federal government, conservatives, or the Supreme Court, there is a suasive effect.
FACTORS AFFECTING JOB SATISFACTION AMONG FACULTY MEMBERS HERZBERG’S TWO FACTOR THEORY PERSPECTIVE A Study of Shah Abdul Latif University, Sind, Pakistan

This paper studies the Herzberg’s two factor notion of job satisfaction. The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between job motivator and job hygiene with job satisfaction. It also aimed to explore whether these job attributes reflect the same notion put forward by Herzberg or not. The study was being conducted on faculty members at SALU. An instrument containing five job hygiene facets and five job motivator facets was used to collect data from respondents. The faculty members were generally found satisfied with their job but satisfaction level varies across gender, age, tenure, rank as well as towards the various attributes of Job motivator and Job hygiene. The facet “Work itself” was found to be the most satisfying job attribute while “Policy” was the least satisfying aspect of job respectively. The result also showed that both job motivator and Job hygiene are moderately to substantially relate with job satisfaction. The factor job Hygiene was found more influential in predicting job satisfaction than Job Motivator. It contradicts Herzberg’s conception that only content factor tends to develop a positive attitude towards job. On the other hand demographic variables showed an insignificant impact in determining the level of job satisfaction among faculty members at SALU.
DNA Polymerases b and l Mediate Overlapping and Independent Roles in Base Excision Repair in Mouse Embryonic Fibroblasts

Base excision repair (BER) is a DNA repair pathway designed to correct small base lesions in genomic DNA. While DNA polymerase beta (pol b) is known to be the main polymerase in the BER pathway, various studies have implicated other DNA polymerases in back-up roles. One such polymerase, DNA polymerase lambda (pol l), was shown to be important in BER of oxidative DNA damage. To further explore roles of the X-family DNA polymerases l and b in BER, we prepared a mouse embryonic fibroblast cell line with deletions in the genes for both pol b and pol l. Neutral red viability assays demonstrated that pol l and pol b double null cells were hypersensitive to alkylating and oxidizing DNA damaging agents. In vitro BER assays revealed a modest contribution of pol l to single-nucleotide BER of base lesions. Additionally, using coimmunoprecipitation experiments with purified enzymes and whole cell extracts, we found that both pol l and pol b interact with the upstream DNA glycosylases for repair of alkylated and oxidized DNA bases. Such interactions could be important in coordinating roles of these polymerases during BER. Citation: Braithwaite EK, Kedar PS, Stumpo DJ, Bertocci B, Freedman JH, et al. (2010) DNA Polymerases b and l Mediate Overlapping and Independent Roles in Base Excision Repair in Mouse Embryonic Fibroblasts. PLoS ONE 5(8): e12229. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0012229 Editor: Janine Santos, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, United States of America Received April 29, 2010; Accepted July 20, 2010; Published August 18, 2010 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. Funding: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants ES050158 and ES050159 from the Intramural Research Program and by NIH grant CA055042 (to L.S.). P.K. ’s contribution was supported in whole with funds from NIH, under delivery order HHSN273200700046U to Constella/SRA, LLC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: wilson5@niehs.nih. gov . These authors contributed equally to this work.
Efficient Energy Management in Distributed Web Search

Distributed Web search engines (WSEs) require warehouse-scale computers to deal with the ever-increasing size of the Web and the large amount of user queries they daily receive. The energy consumption of this infrastructure has a major impact on the economic profitability of WSEs. Recently several approaches to reduce the energy consumption of WSEs have been proposed. Such solutions leverage dynamic voltage and frequency scaling techniques in modern CPUs to adapt the WSEs' query processing to the incoming query traffic without negative impacts on latencies. A state-of-the-art research approach is the PESOS (Predictive Energy Saving Online Scheduling) algorithm, which can reduce the energy consumption of a WSE' single server by up to 50%. We evaluate PESOS on a simulated distributed WSE composed of a thousand of servers, and we compare its performance w.r. t. an industry-level baseline, called PEGASUS. Our results show that PESOS can reduce the CPU energy consumption of a distributed WSE by up to 18% with respect to PEGASUS, while providing query response times which are in line with user expectations.
Age-related decrease in male reproductive success and song quality in Drosophila montana

In the present paper, we have studied the effects of aging on male reproductive success and song quality in Drosophila montana. We analyzed the reproductive success of wild-caught males at their normal breeding age during the mating season and after maintaining the males in laboratory from 1 to 5 months. In line with the mutation accumulation theory of aging, none of the factors affecting the reproductive success of wild-caught males during the mating season were related to male longevity. However, mating activity and progeny production of the males decreased with male age. Interestingly, there was no significant variation in progeny production between males at their normal breeding age, whereas at older age, the variation between males becomes significant. The quality of sexually selected song traits deteriorated with male age in concert with the decrease in male reproductive success. The size of the males did not have an effect on male reproductive success at the normal breeding age, but at older age, larger males were able to maintain the sexually selected carrier frequency of the song at higher level than the smaller males. We conclude that by experimentally extending the reproductive age of the males beyond that which they normally experience in nature, it is possible to expose relationships between reproductive success, sexually selected characters, and body size that are not apparent when analyzed for the males at their normal breeding age. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.
Impacts of droughts and extreme-temperature events on gross primary production and ecosystem respiration: a systematic assessment across ecosystems and climate zones

Abstract. Extreme climatic events, such as droughts and heat stress, induce anomalies in ecosystem–atmosphere CO2 fluxes, such as gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Reco), and, hence, can change the net ecosystem carbon balance. However, despite our increasing understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the magnitudes of the impacts of different types of extremes on GPP and Reco within and between ecosystems remain poorly predicted. Here we aim to identify the major factors controlling the amplitude of extreme-event impacts on GPP, Reco, and the resulting net ecosystem production (NEP). We focus on the impacts of heat and drought and their combination. We identified hydrometeorological extreme events in consistently downscaled water availability and temperature measurements over a 30-year time period. We then used FLUXNET eddy covariance flux measurements to estimate the CO2 flux anomalies during these extreme events across dominant vegetation types and climate zones. Overall, our results indicate that short-term heat extremes increased respiration more strongly than they downregulated GPP, resulting in a moderate reduction in the ecosystem's carbon sink potential. In the absence of heat stress, droughts tended to have smaller and similarly dampening effects on both GPP and Reco and, hence, often resulted in neutral NEP responses. The combination of drought and heat typically led to a strong decrease in GPP, whereas heat and drought impacts on respiration partially offset each other. Taken together, compound heat and drought events led to the strongest C sink reduction compared to any single-factor extreme. A key insight of this paper, however, is that duration matters most: for heat stress during droughts, the magnitude of impacts systematically increased with duration, whereas under heat stress without drought, the response of Reco over time turned from an initial increase to a downregulation after about 2 weeks. This confirms earlier theories that not only the magnitude but also the duration of an extreme event determines its impact. Our study corroborates the results of several local site-level case studies but as a novelty generalizes these findings on the global scale. Specifically, we find that the different response functions of the two antipodal land–atmosphere fluxes GPP and Reco can also result in increasing NEP during certain extreme conditions. Apparently counterintuitive findings of this kind bear great potential for scrutinizing the mechanisms implemented in state-of-the-art terrestrial biosphere models and provide a benchmark for future model development and testing.
Comparison of Antibacterial Activity Against Food-Borne Bacteria of Alpinia galanga, Curcuma longa, and Zingiber cassumunar

The aim of this study was to compare the antibacterial action of Alpinia galanga Linn. , Curcuma longa Linn. and Zingiber cassumunar Roxb. against food-borne bacteria and to search for the most effective fraction from these plants. The crude extracts and the essential oils of the plant rhizomes were used as test fractions. Several strains of food-borne bacteria were used as test microorganisms. The crude ethanolic extract of A. galanga inhibited Cory- nebacterium sp. , Staphylococcus aureus and four strains of Escherichia coli. C. longa and Z. cassumunar inhibited only Corynebacterium sp. The essential oils of the two plants exhibited dramatically stronger antibacterial activity than their crude extracts. The antibacterial activity of only 40 μg of A. galanga essential oil was as effective as 15,000 μg of its crude extract in inhibiting E. coli. The essential oil of Z. cassumunar inhibited E.coli and Pasteurella multocida, whereas its crude extract did not. The essential oils of A. galanga and Z. cas- sumunar offered the highest potential for further investigating their minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations. The antibacterial action of the oils appears to be a bactericidal effect. Of the plants studied, A. galanga was the most effective at inhibiting food-borne bacteria. The antibacterial activity of the essential oil of A. galanga was two times higher than that of Z. cassumunar.
Who Decides? The Social Characteristics of Who Initiates Marital Separation

This study investigates gender differences in the associations between social characteristics and men's and women's reports of which spouse initiated marital separation. Using retrospective data on 9,147 first marriages from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey (2001), we find that some social characteristics differentiated between separations initiated by wives compared to husbands, but few differences were statistically significant. The main gender difference is that wives are more inclined than husbands to initiate separation on the basis of their husbands' as well as their own social characteristics. Our findings indicate that taking account of which spouse initiates separation is important for improving our understanding of gender differences in the processes of marriage breakdown, but more research is required.