Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MusicDigger : A Tool for Music Discovery

Discovering music is a process that can be facilitated by many different approaches, depending on the music style and even personal preferences of the listener/researcher of music. The common ground for all approaches is to explore an artist’s work as discographies and to detect collaborations between musicians. In this paper, we present MusicDigger as a tool that serves for these common discovery forms, based on a publicdomain, detailed music metadata set consisting of millions of records. Digging is, at its core, discovering specific items within a database. With MusicDigger, exploration starts with an initial focus on an artist or record label. Our solution then can extend to two different interfaces. Our timeline based interface allows looking at artists (own or contributed) work with advanced filtering features and easy, intuitive browsing. Our network based interface, guided by the user, allows discovering collaborations between musicians. The nodes are placed in a circular layout and tree-like graphs are created, minimizing the number of edge crossings in music networks which are highly connected. Based on our user studies and interviews, we observe that our features are very helpful for people who regularly use a music database to learn about details and discover artists, and our interface provides a helpful and easy-to-navigate view on music data. We also believe that our interfaces and interaction options are applicable to other domains, such as browsing a database of movies.
Expected Task Duration and Perceived Effort: An Attributional Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of anticipated task duration on ratings of perceived exertion during treadmill running. Male subjects. (N = 15) completed two separate runs on a motor-driven treadmill at 85% V02 max. During one trial, subjects ran for a period of 20 minutes, while for a second trial, subjects were led to believe that they would be running for 30 minutes. In each case, the trials were terminated at the 20-minute mark. Ratings of perceived exertion, heart rates, respiratory rates, and ventilatory minute volumes were collected across each trial. Results supported the supposition that the anticipation of continued performance mediated ratings of effort expenditure. This effect was obtained only during moderate work levels and was in contrast to research examining mental fatigue.
Path Selection for Communicating Tasks in a Wormhole-Routed Multicomputer

In a multicomputer that uses wormhole routing or virtual cut-through circuit switching, the communication delay in sending a message between two processors along a path A increases significantly if the message is "blocked" by another message using one of the channels in path A. Such "blocking" can only occur if there is contention for a common channel by two or more paths. In this paper, we consider the problem of selecting contention-free or minimum-contention paths for a set of communicating tasks that have been mapped onto nodes in a multicomputer, This problem is formalized and shown to be an NPhard problem. thus, a heuristic solution is proposed for general static interconnection networks. Simulations results show that our method performs significantly better than alternative methods for this problem.
Learners' Perceptions of How Anxiety Interacts With Personal and Instructional Factors to Influence Their Achievement in English: A Qualitative Analysis of EFL Learners in China

Although many researchers have examined the effects of anxiety on second language learning in recent years, the specific sources and effects of language anxiety have not yet been clearly established. Moreover, few studies have specifically examined anxiety from the learner's perspective. Although previous interview and diary studies have pointed to a number of interesting relationships between anxiety and other variables, conclusions have been based on the researchers' personal interpretations of learner statements. The present study examines learners' perceptions of how students' anxiety works together with other variables in influencing language learning. Twenty-one students with varying levels of anxiety were interviewed for this study, a theoretical model was generated, and a sequential order of influence among the major affinities was indicated.
Right-Wing Authoritarianism Among White South African Students: Its Measurement and Correlates

Abstract The psychometric properties and correlates of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA Scale; Altemeyer, 1981) were investigated using a sample of White South African students (N = 217). Traditional measures of authoritarianism have performed particularly badly in such settings. The RWA scale was factorially unidimensional and highly reliable, and correlated powerfully with validity criteria of authoritarianism, such as civil liberties stance, anti-Black prejudice and discrimination, liberalism/conservatism, and acceptance of parental religious beliefs. The particularly strong correlation with anti-Black prejudice contradicted influential previous findings suggesting that this correlation would be very weak in settings where racism was widespread or normative.
MINIMIZING TRADEOFFS WHEN REDESIGNING WORK: EVIDENCE FROM A LONGITUDINAL QUASI‐EXPERIMENT

Although cross-sectional job design research highlights a tradeoff between motivational and mechanistic work design, the redesign literature is more equivocal. We develop a work redesign process that suggests the tradeoffs can be minimized if both motivational and mechanistic approaches are explicitly considered when work is designed and the ultimate outcomes of the design effort (e.g., satisfaction, efficiency, or both) are taken into account when work is redesigned. In a longitudinal quasi-experiment, we examined how jobs can be differentially changed in terms of their motivational and mechanistic properties. Results showed at least partial support for all expected relationships. This suggests that the tradeoffs previously considered inherent in job design may not always occur, particularly if conceptual and methodological consideration is given to their minimization.
Eliminating OS-Caused Large JVM Pauses for Latency-Sensitive Java-Based Cloud Platforms

For PaaS-deployed (Platform as a Service) customer-facing applications (e.g., online gaming and online chatting), ensuring low latencies is not just a preferred feature, but a must-have feature. Given the popularity and powerfulness of Java platforms, a significant portion of today's PaaS platforms run Java. JVM (Java Virtual Machine) manages a heap space to hold application objects. The heap space can be frequently GC-ed (Garbage Collected), and applications can be occasionally stopped for long time during some GC and JVM activities. In this work, we investigated the JVM pause problem. We found out that there are some (and large) JVM STW pauses cannot be explained by application-level activities and JVM activities during GC, instead, they are caused by OS mechanisms. We successfully reproduced such problems and root-cause-ed the reasons. The findings can be used to enhance JVM implementation. We also proposed a set of solutions to mitigate and eliminate these large STW pauses. We share the knowledge and experiences in this writing.
T helper 17 cells play a critical pathogenic role in lung cancer

Significance One of the challenging problems in lung cancer is to understand how inflammation pathways influence on the development of lung cancer and to identify early immune mediators. In this study, we functionally dissect the critical events occurring at the interface between endogenously arising lung tumors and the host immune system that determine tumor progression. Our findings greatly advance our knowledge on the function of T helper 17 cells in lung cancer and help understand the mechanisms of inflammatory mediators that promote lung cancer. Lung cancer development is associated with extensive pulmonary inflammation. In addition, the linkage between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer has been demonstrated in population-based studies. IL-17–producing CD4 helper T cells (Th17 cells) play a critical role in promoting chronic tissue inflammation. Although Th17 cells are found in human COPD and lung cancer, their role is not understood. We have thus used a mouse model of lung cancer, in which an oncogenic form of K-ras (K-rasG12D), frequently found in human lung cancer, is restrictedly expressed in lung epithelial cells [via Clara cell secretory protein (CCSPcre)]. In this model, Th17 and Treg but not Th1 cells were found enriched at the tumor tissues. When CCSPcre/K-rasG12D mice were weekly challenged with a lysate of nontypeable Haemophilus influenza (NTHi), which induces COPD-type inflammation and accelerates the tumor growth, they showed greatly enhanced Th17 cell infiltration in the lung tissues. Lack of IL-17, but not IL-17F, resulted in a significant reduction in lung tumor numbers in CCSPcre/K-rasG12D mice and also those treated with NTHi. Absence of IL-17 not only resulted in reduction of tumor cell proliferation and angiogenesis, but also decreased the expression of proinflammatory mediators and reduced recruitment of myeloid cells. Depletion of Gr-1+CD11b+ myeloid cells in CCSPcre/K-rasG12D mice suppressed tumor growth in lung, indicating Gr-1+CD11b+ myeloid cells recruited by IL-17 play a protumor role. Taken together, our data demonstrate a critical role for Th17 cell-mediated inflammation in lung tumorigenesis and suggest a novel way for prevention and treatment of this disease.
Using machine learning to automate compiler optimisation

Many optimisations in modern compilers have been traditionally based around using analysis to examine certain aspects of the code; the compiler heuristics then make a decision based on this information as to what to optimise, where to optimise and to what extent to optimise. The exact contents of these heuristics have been carefully tuned by experts, using their experience, as well as analytical tools, to produce solid performance. This work proposes an alternative approach – that of using proper statistical analysis to drive these optimisation goals instead of human intuition, through the use of machine learning. This work shows how, by using a probabilistic search of the optimisation space, we can achieve a significant speedup over the baseline compiler with the highest optimisation settings, on a number of different processor architectures. Additionally, there follows a further methodology for speeding up this search by being able to transfer our knowledge of one program to another. This thesis shows that, as is the case in many other domains, programs can be successfully represented by program features, which can then be used to gauge their similarity and thus the applicability of previously learned off-line knowledge. Employing this method, we are able to gain the same results in terms of performance, reducing the time taken by an order of magnitude. Finally, it is demonstrated how statistical analysis of programs allows us to learn additional important optimisation information, purely by examining the features alone. By incorporating this additional information into our model, we show how good results can be achieved in just one compilation. This work is tested on real hardware, for both the embedded and general purpose domain, showing its wide applicability. Declaration I declare that this thesis was composed by myself, that the work contained herein is my own except where explicitly stated otherwise in the text, and that this work has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except as specified.
Prevalence of screening in patients newly diagnosed with colorectal cancer in Ontario.

OBJECTIVES The primary objective was to determine the proportion of individuals with a new diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) in Ontario in whom the cancer was screen detected. The secondary objectives were to determine the cancer stage at diagnosis and the indications for the procedure in patients who received their first colonoscopy. PATIENTS AND METHODS Individuals admitted to a hospital with a new diagnosis of CRC were randomly selected after stratifying by hospital type (teaching or community). The Canadian Institute for Health Information's Discharge Abstract Database was used to identify individuals with a first diagnosis of CRC during calendar year (CY) 2000, and Ontario Health Insurance Plan data were used to identify people 50 to 74 years of age who had their first colonoscopy during CY 2000. Up to 20 individuals were selected for each group (CRC or colonoscopy) in each of seven randomly selected community hospitals and three randomly selected teaching hospitals. Data were abstracted from the hospital charts. RESULTS The hospital charts of 152 patients with a new diagnosis of CRC were examined. Of the 133 patients in whom screening status could be determined, eight had screen-detected cancers (6.0%). Of the 99 patients (65% of the sample) in whom stage could be determined, 43 (43.4%) had advanced disease (tumour-node-metastasis stage III or IV) at diagnosis. The hospital charts of 184 patients who underwent their first colonoscopy were examined. Of the 175 patients in whom the indication for colonoscopy could be determined, 45 underwent the procedure for screening purposes, 10 were for diagnostic workup of anemia and 120 for evaluation of symptoms. CONCLUSIONS The low proportion (6%) of screen-detected CRC and the high proportion of patients (43.4%) with advanced disease at diagnosis reflect the lack of an organized screening program.
Edge-motion video summarization: Economical video summarization for low powered devices

In this paper we propose a new dynamic video summarization procedure. For this purpose, we find an economical image representation in terms of edge-like features that facilitates video re-sampling with minimal loss of information. We propose a fast noise tolerant way to extract the representation. We argue against the use of an auxiliary descriptor for the samples and we show how we can re-use the existing Principal Components Analysis (PCA) with the appropriate modifications on the new image representation without sacrificing accuracy.
Resource Dependence and in Terorganiza Tional Relations

A resource dependence model is proposed as a conceptual scheme to account for organizational behavior observed under conditions where interorganizational relations are a critical environmental contingency. The model is used to explain the pattern of transactions between 19 local Employment Service offices and 249 social service organizations in New York State. Four aspects of interorganization transaction are taken as problematic: intensity, reciprocity, standardization of interaction, and the degree of perceived cooperation in the relationship. The results support the important role assigned to the manipulation of authority by the resource dependence perspective, and the findings document the minimal role played by domain consensus.
The community-search problem and how to plan a successful cocktail party

A lot of research in graph mining has been devoted in the discovery of communities. Most of the work has focused in the scenario where communities need to be discovered with only reference to the input graph. However, for many interesting applications one is interested in finding the community formed by a given set of nodes. In this paper we study a query-dependent variant of the community-detection problem, which we call the community-search problem: given a graph G, and a set of query nodes in the graph, we seek to find a subgraph of G that contains the query nodes and it is densely connected. We motivate a measure of density based on minimum degree and distance constraints, and we develop an optimum greedy algorithm for this measure. We proceed by characterizing a class of monotone constraints and we generalize our algorithm to compute optimum solutions satisfying any set of monotone constraints. Finally we modify the greedy algorithm and we present two heuristic algorithms that find communities of size no greater than a specified upper bound. Our experimental evaluation on real datasets demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed algorithms and the quality of the solutions we obtain.
Patterns of Wildlife Value Orientations in Hunters' Families

Public value orientations toward wildlife may be growing less utilitarian and more protectionist. To better understand one aspect of this trend, we investigated patterns of wildlife value orientations within families. Using a mail survey, we sampled Pennsylvania and Colorado hunting license holders 50 or older, obtaining a 54% response rate ( n = 599). Males (94% of sample) reported their own basic beliefs about wildlife and perceptions of the basic beliefs of their mothers, fathers, spouses, oldest sons, and oldest daughters. A majority approved of wildlife use and hunting but not wildlife rights. Males were least likely to perceive differences between their own beliefs and those of their fathers and sons and most likely to perceive differences between their own beliefs and those of their daughters. Respondents who perceived most differences were likely to report moderate utilitarian value orientations and to have grown up in urban areas, lived in more than one state, and attended college. Results link values shifts to three current trends: urbanization, residential mobility, and increasing education. To the extent that wildlife value orientations are changing, wildlife management agencies must adapt to that change. Future studies should measure beliefs of multiple family members and use both quantitative and qualitative approaches to understanding values transmission.
Phospholipase Region of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Is a Preferential Locus for IS6110 Transposition

ABSTRACT Enzymes with phospholipase C activity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis have been recently described. The three genes encoding these proteins, plcA, plcB, andplcC, are located at position 2351 of the genomic map ofM. tuberculosis H37Rv and are arranged in tandem. We have previously described the presence of variations in the restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns of the plcA andplcB genes in M. tuberculosis clinical isolates. In the present work we investigated the origin of this polymorphism by sequence analysis of the phospholipase-encoding regions of 11 polymorphic M. tuberculosisclinical isolates. To do so, a long-PCR assay was used to amplify a 5,131-bp fragment that contains the plcA andplcB genes and part of the plcC gene. In the M. tuberculosis strains studied the production of an amplicon ∼1,400 bp larger than anticipated was observed. Sequence analysis of the PCR products indicated the presence of a foreign sequence that corresponded to an IS6110 element. We observed insertion elements in the plcA,plcB, and plcC genes. One site inplcB had the highest incidence of transposition (5 out of 11 strains). In two strains the insertion element was found inplcA in the same nucleotide position. In all the cases, IS6110 was transposed in the same direction. The high level of transposition in the phospholipase region can lead to the excision of fragments of genomic DNA by recombination of neighboring IS6110 elements, as demonstrated by finding the deletion, in two strains, of a 2,837-bp fragment that includedplcA and most of plcB. This can explain the negative results obtained by some authors when detecting themtp40 sequence (plcA) by PCR. Given the high polymorphism in this region, the use of the mtp40sequence as a genetic marker for M. tuberculosis sensu stricto is very restricted.
A computer framework to support self-explanation*

Studying examples is a natural and common way of learning, and students use examples extensively when acquiring new skills [1, 2]. However, the learning benefits of examples are unclear, some studies showing great benefits [3], but others indicating only ability to solve problems similar to the original examples [4, 5]. However, self-explaining examples, that is analyzing and generating justifications of example steps, ordinarily produces both better problem solving performance and better understanding of domain
On Large Deviation Analysis of Sampling from Typical Sets

Consider a pair of correlated sources (X, Y ). With the collection of typical sequences of X and Y , one can associate a nearly semi-regular bipartite graph. The typical sequences of X and Y form vertices, and two sequences are connected by an edge if they are jointly typical. In this work, we study the structural properties of these graphs. In particular, we study regularity and scarcity of this graph by considering the asymptotic properties of samples taken from this graph. These results find applications in certain frameworks for transmission of correlated sources over multiuser channels.
Understanding web usage at different levels of abstraction: coarsening and visualizing sequences

As Web sites begin to realise the advantages of engaging users in more extended interactions involving a semi-structured combination of information and communication behaviour, the log les recording Web usage become more complex. While Web usage mining provides for the syntactic speci cation of structured patterns like association rules or (generalised) sequences, it is less clear how to analyse and visualise usage data involving longer patterns with little expected structure, without losing an overview of the whole of all paths. The method proposed in this paper employs two ways of analysing complex Web usage data. Concept hierarchies are used as a basic method of aggregating Web pages. Intervalbased coarsening is then proposed as a method for representing sequences at coarser levels of abstraction. Relations to the measures support, con dence, and ways of analysing generalised sequences are shown. The tool STRATDYN that implements interval-based coarsening uses 2 testing for analysing di erences in support values, and coarsened stratograms to visualise Web usage, and to provide coarsening and zooming. A case study of agent-supported shopping in an E-commerce site illustrates the formalism.
Platelet Inhibition by Nitrite Is Dependent on Erythrocytes and Deoxygenation

Background Nitrite is a nitric oxide (NO) metabolite in tissues and blood, which can be converted to NO under hypoxia to facilitate tissue perfusion. Although nitrite is known to cause vasodilation following its reduction to NO, the effect of nitrite on platelet activity remains unclear. In this study, the effect of nitrite and nitrite+erythrocytes, with and without deoxygenation, on platelet activity was investigated. Methodology/Finding Platelet aggregation was studied in platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and PRP+erythrocytes by turbidimetric and impedance aggregometry, respectively. In PRP, DEANONOate inhibited platelet aggregation induced by ADP while nitrite had no effect on platelets. In PRP+erythrocytes, the inhibitory effect of DEANONOate on platelets decreased whereas nitrite at physiologic concentration (0.1 µM) inhibited platelet aggregation and ATP release. The effect of nitrite+erythrocytes on platelets was abrogated by C-PTIO (a membrane-impermeable NO scavenger), suggesting an NO-mediated action. Furthermore, deoxygenation enhanced the effect of nitrite as observed from a decrease of P-selectin expression and increase of the cGMP levels in platelets. The ADP-induced platelet aggregation in whole blood showed inverse correlations with the nitrite levels in whole blood and erythrocytes. Conclusion Nitrite alone at physiological levels has no effect on platelets in plasma. Nitrite in the presence of erythrocytes inhibits platelets through its reduction to NO, which is promoted by deoxygenation. Nitrite may have role in modulating platelet activity in the circulation, especially during hypoxia.