Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What's the best music you have?: designing music recommendation for group enjoyment in groupfun

Satisfaction and enjoyment are essential in group entertaining domains in which individuals share their preferences and actively participate in group decisions. Group recommender systems (GRS) do not yet employ methods and features allowing users to discover others' interests in an enjoyable fashion. Based on an in-depth user study and a user-centered design approach, we created GroupFun, a collaborative environment that help groups of friends' arrive at a common decision fostering group enjoyment and offering them a unique, fun music experience. We also conducted a user evaluation consisting in: system usage, questionnaires and open interviews to collect user feedback about our algorithms and interaction. Our results present GroupFun as an enjoyable and entertaining group decision platform which highly motivates users.
Capturing and analyzing stability of human body motions using video cameras

The need for capturing human body motions has been increasing recently for making movies, sports instruction systems and robots that can simulate human motions. The paper proposes a method to facilitate motion capturing using inexpensive video cameras. In our system, a few cameras are used to obtain multiple views of a human body and a three dimensional (3D) volume consistent with the views is created. A model of the human body is then fitted to the volume to obtain the configuration of the human body. We also propose a method to analyze the stability of human postures. We have analyzed a technique of the traditional Chinese martial art, Shorinji Kempo, based on stability to show the effectiveness of our method.
Ridge preservation following tooth extraction using a polylactide and polyglycolide sponge as space filler: a clinical and histological study in humans.

BACKGROUND The placement of different graft materials and/or the use of occlusive membranes to cover the extraction socket entrance are techniques aimed at preserving/reducing alveolar ridge resorption. The use of grafting materials in fresh extraction sockets has, however, been questioned because particles of the grafted material have been found in alveolar sockets 6-9 months following their insertion. AIM The aims of the study were to (i). evaluate whether alveolar ridge resorption following tooth extraction could be prevented or reduced by the application of a bioabsorbable polylactide-polyglycolide sponge used as a space filler, compared to natural healing by clot formation, and (ii). evaluate histologically the amount and quality of bone tissue formed in the sockets, 6 months after the use of the bioabsorbable material. MATERIAL AND METHODS Thirty-six patients, undergoing periodontal therapy, participated in this study. All patients were scheduled for extraction of one or more compromised teeth. Following elevation of full-thickness flaps and extraction of teeth, measurements were taken to evaluate the distance between three landmarks (mesio-buccal, mid-buccal, disto-buccal) on individually prefabricated stents, and the alveolar crest. Twenty-six alveolar sockets (test) were filled with a bioabsorbable polylactide-polyglycolide acid sponge (Fisiograft), while 13 sockets (controls) were allowed to heal without any filling material. The flaps were sutured with no attempt to achieve primary closure of the surgical wound. Re-entry for implant surgery was performed 6 months following the extractions. Thirteen biopsies (10 test and three control sites) were harvested from the sites scheduled for implant placement. RESULTS The clinical measurements at 6 months revealed, in the mesial-buccal site, a loss of bone height of 0.2 mm (1.4 SD) in the test and 0.6 mm (1.1 SD) in the controls; in the mid-buccal portion a gain of 1.3 mm (1.9 SD) in the test and a loss of 0.8 mm (1.6 SD) in the controls; and in the distal portion a loss of 0.1 mm (1.1 SD) in the test and of 0.8 (1.5 SD) mm in the controls. The biopsies harvested from the test sites revealed that the new bone formed at 6 months was mineralized, mature and well structured. Particles of the grafted material could not be identified in any of the 10 test biopsies. The bone formed in the control sites was also mature and well structured. CONCLUSION The results of this study indicate that alveolar bone resorption following tooth extraction may be prevented or reduced by the use of a bioabsorbable synthetic sponge of polylactide-polyglycolide acid. The quality of bone formed seemed to be optimal for dental implant insertion.
Subjective Beliefs, Memory and Functional Health: Change and Associations over 12 Years in the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Background: Neither subjective memory beliefs, nor remembering itself, can be isolated from the overall context in which one is aging, nor are the drivers of memory complaints well specified. Sense of control is an important self-regulatory resource that drives cognitive and physical health over the lifespan. Existing findings are equivocal concerning both the extent of stability or change in control beliefs over time as well as their contribution to changes in behavior. Objective: Subjective beliefs may play a role when engaging memory processes or identifying memory complaints, and it has been argued that self-regulatory potential in general may be limited by age-related changes in the domains of health and cognition. We aimed to examine trajectories of change and shed light on relationships among subjective beliefs and indicators of memory and functional health. Methods: Participants' data were drawn from four measurement occasions over up to a 12-year period (1992-2004) from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ALSA), a population-based study of older adults [age 65-100 years; mean age(SD) at the first and final occasion 78.2 (6.7) and 84.9 (4.9) years, respectively]. Participants completed three questionnaires assessing subjective beliefs concerning (1) memory knowledge and control, (2) health control, and (3) expectancy of control over a range of lifestyle situations. Memory comprised a recall composite. Functional health tapped mobility and disability. Latent growth curve models incorporated informative covariates (baseline age, gender, self-rated health, education, and chronic conditions). Results: While subjective memory control beliefs, but not subjective knowledge of memory tasks, improved over 12 years, neither was associated with level of memory performance. Knowledge of memory tasks was linked to a significant memory decline. Beliefs about memory, health, and lifestyle were interrelated. Declines in remembering and health were also coupled; moreover, changes in both were coupled with change in lifestyle control beliefs. Conclusions: This is the first examination of individual differences in changes in, and relationships among, psychological domains of subjective beliefs about memory, health, and lifestyle, and objective remembering and functional health in very late life. Findings point to a system of coupled changes in memory and health in late life that is related to underlying beliefs about control over lifestyle.
What's in a frame? Social organization, risk perception and the sociology of knowledge

A central problem in the sociology of knowledge has been to show that sane people can intelligibly have quite different alternative understandings of the same problem, such as a kind of risk, without abandoning the idea that there is a real problem about which to disagree, and to show the social basis of both plurality and viability. In recent decades, attempts to make this problem tractable have focused on the idea of a ‘frame’. Theories of frames offer accounts of the range of content , as distinguished from theories of processes of diffusion, of which risk amplification theory is the best known example. In this article, several theories of frames -- those of Goffman, D'Andrade, Moscovici, Gamson, Schon and Rein, and of prospect theory -- found are to be inadequate, because of their lack of clarity and plausibility in their answers to four key questions: ‘what is the relationship between sense-making and bias? ’, ‘how are frames to be individuated? ’, ‘where do frames come from? ’, and ‘how far and how can people move between frames? ’. The article makes the case for a neo-Durkheimian institutional theory developed by Douglas and others. This approach derives frames as concrete applications to specific contexts from thought styles, which are in turn the product of solidarities or institutional styles of social organization, because it can offer clear, testable, parsimonious hypotheses with which to answer these four questions. The theory therefore provides an account of the institutional logic of framing, and presents reasons for preferring this to non-institutional approaches such as the various kinds of cognitivism. The article offers three conceptual innovations with which to develop the neo-Durkheimian theory, in order better to deal with the crucial fourth question about the scope for mobility between frames. These innovations and some specific hypotheses about the scope for mobility between frames are supported by consideration of some exploratory qualitative empirical research on privacy risk perception. The theory provides a more satisfactory strategy for tackling the core problem than most others, by showing plurality to be limited, by showing clear and specific social bases for plurality of frames, by neither wholly endorsing nor wholly rejecting any basic bias, and by showing that their conflictual and systemic interdependence is what makes for viability.
An ultralow-power memory-based big-data computing platform by nonvolatile domain-wall nanowire devices

As one recently introduced non-volatile memory (NVM) device, domain-wall nanowire (or race-track) has shown potential for main memory storage but also computing capability. In this paper, the domain-wall nanowire is studied for a memory-based computing platform towards ultra-low-power big-data processing. One domain-wall nanowire based logic-in-memory architecture is proposed for big-data processing, where the domain-wall nanowire memory is deployed as main memory for data storage as well as XOR-logic for comparison and addition operations. The domain-wall nanowire based logic-in-memory circuits are evaluated by SPICE-level verifications. Further evaluated by applications of general-purpose SPEC2006 benchmark and also web-searching oriented Phoenix benchmark, the proposed computing platform can exhibit a significant power saving on both main memory and ALU under the similar performance when compared to CMOS based designs.
Influence of Age on Racial Disparities in Stroke Admission Rates, Hospital Charges, and Outcomes in South Carolina

Background and Purpose— Racial disparities among US stroke patients have been well documented. However, the extent to which disparities in outcomes vary by age is unclear. This study’s goals were to examine the degree of racial disparities in South Carolina between African Americans (AAs) and Caucasian Americans (CAs) in stroke admission rates, hospital charges, and outcomes and to determine whether racial differences varied by age. Methods— From the state hospital discharge database, admissions with a primary diagnosis of stroke discharged from 2002 to 2006 were identified. Age group–specific stroke admission rates, hospital charges, length of stay, intensive care unit utilization, medical complications, and discharge disposition (in-hospital death, discharged home, discharge to rehabilitation facility) were compared between AAs and CAs by multiple-linear or logistic-regression analysis. Results— There were 58 272 stroke admissions during the 5-year period. Stroke admission rates were persistently higher for AAs in all age groups except those ≥85 years old. Hospital charges totaled $1.51 billion; 24.0% ($362.5 million) of this total was attributable to racial disparities, 70.8% ($256.5 million) of which stemmed from the 36.6% of patients <65 years old. Most of the acute outcomes were poorer for AAs compared with CAs across age groups. Conclusions— Racial disparities in stroke admissions are more pronounced in younger age groups and result in significant economic consequences. Although AA stroke patients experienced generally worse acute outcomes than did CAs, these differences appear to be relatively consistent across age groups.
Reasoning about online algorithms with weighted automata

We describe an automata-theoretic approach for the competitive analysis of <i>online algorithms</i>. Our approach is based on <i>weighted automata</i>, which assign to each input word a cost in R<sup>≥0</sup>. By relating the “unbounded look ahead” of optimal offline algorithms with nondeterminism, and relating the “no look ahead” of online algorithms with determinism, we are able to solve problems about the competitive ratio of online algorithms, and the memory they require, by reducing them to questions about <i>determinization</i> and <i>approximated determinization</i> of weighted automata.
The Effects of Family and Social Engagement on the Screen Time of Youth with Developmental Disabilities: A Dissertation

Developmental disabilities (DEVDIS) such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders (ASD), developmental delay (DD), and learning disabilities, affect 14% of US youth, who also experience higher rates of obesity, approximately 19%, than youth without these conditions. Screen time is a risk factor for obesity, though it is not well-studied among youth with developmental disabilities. Youth with developmental disabilities experience challenges with learning, have underdeveloped social skills, and problematic behaviors. These predispositions can often result in peer rejection. The resulting social isolation may make these youth particularly vulnerable to engaging in solitary activities such as screen time. The objectives of this dissertation were to compare screen time rates among youth with developmental disabilities to typically developing youth and to examine the associations between social and family engagement with screen time among youth with developmental disabilities. Data from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), a national cross-sectional study that assesses the physical and emotional health of US children (N = 91,642), were used. Youth 6-17 years, with ADHD (n = 7,024), ASD (n = 1,200), DD (n = 3,276), LD (n = 7,482), and without special health care needs (n = 44,461) were studied. Unadjusted analyses found that children with DEVDIS engage in higher rates of screen time than youth without special health care needs. For youth with DEVDIS who were medicated for their ADHD, these associations attenuated. Thus ADHD symptoms, a
A Collusion-Resistant Automation Scheme for Social Moderation Systems

For current Web 2.0 services, manual examination of user uploaded content is normally required to ensure its legitimacy and appropriateness, which is a substantial burden to service providers. To reduce labor costs and the delays caused by content censoring, social moderation has been proposed as a front-line mechanism, whereby user moderators are encouraged to examine content before system moderation is required. Given the immerse amount of new content added to the Web each day, there is a need for automation schemes to facilitate rear system moderation. This kind of mechanism is expected to automatically summarize reports from user moderators and ban misbehaving users or remove inappropriate content whenever possible. However, the accuracy of such schemes may be reduced by collusion attacks, where some work together to mislead the automatic summarization in order to obtain shared benefits. In this paper, we propose a collusion-resistant automation scheme for social moderation systems. Because some user moderators may collude and dishonestly claim that a user misbehaves, our scheme detects whether an accusation from a user moderator is fair or malicious based on the structure of mutual accusations of all users in the system. Through simulations we show that collusion attacks are likely to succeed if an intuitive count-based automation scheme is used. The proposed scheme, which is based on the community structure of the user accusation graph, achieves a decent performance in most scenarios.
The Epicurean Fly: Using Drosophila Melanogaster to Study Metabolism

In this review, the utility of Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism for research in metabolism will be demonstrated. Importantly, many metabolic pathways are conserved in both man and the fly. Recent work has highlighted that these conserved molecular pathways have the potential to give rise to similar phenotypes. For example, it has proven possible to generate obese and diabetic Drosophila; conversely, genetic manipulation can also generate lean and hypoglycemic phenotypes. From conserved circulating hormones to key enzymes, the fly is host to a variety of homologous, metabolically active signaling mechanisms. The world of Drosophila research has not only a rich history of developing techniques for exquisite genetic manipulation, but also continues to develop genetic methodologies at an exciting rate. Many of these techniques add to the cadre of experimental tools available for the use of the fly as a model organism for studying carbohydrate and lipid homeostasis. This review is written for the pediatric-scientist with little background in Drosophila, with the goal of relaying the potential of this model organism for contributing to a better understanding of diseases affecting today's children.
Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics of 3-n-Butylphthalide (NBP) in Humans: The Role of Cytochrome P450s and Alcohol Dehydrogenase in Biotransformation

3-n-Butylphthalide (NBP) is a cardiovascular drug currently used for the treatment of cerebral ischemia. The present study aims to investigate the metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and excretion of NBP in humans and identify the enzymes responsible for the formation of major metabolites. NBP underwent extensive metabolism after an oral administration of 200 mg NBP and 23 metabolites were identified in human plasma and urine. Principal metabolic pathways included hydroxylation on alkyl side chain, particularly at 3-, ω-1-, and ω-carbons, and further oxidation and conjugation. Approximately 81.6% of the dose was recovered in urine, mainly as NBP-11-oic acid (M5-2) and glucuronide conjugates of M5-2 and mono-hydroxylated products. 10-Keto-NBP (M2), 3-hydroxy-NBP (M3-1), 10-hydroxy-NBP (M3-2), and M5-2 were the major circulating metabolites, wherein the areas under the curve values were 1.6-, 2.9-, 10.3-, and 4.1-fold higher than that of NBP. Reference standards of these four metabolites were obtained through microbial biotransformation by Cunninghamella blakesleana. In vitro phenotyping studies demonstrated that multiple cytochrome P450 (P450) isoforms, especially CYP3A4, 2E1, and 1A2, were involved in the formation of M3-1, M3-2, and 11-hydroxy-NBP. Using M3-2 and 11-hydroxy-NBP as substrates, human subcellular fractions experiments revealed that P450, alcohol dehydrogenase, and aldehyde dehydrogenase catalyzed the generation of M2 and M5-2. Formation of M5-2 was much faster than that of M2, and M5-2 can undergo β-oxidation to yield phthalide-3-acetic acid in rat liver homogenate. Overall, our study demonstrated that NBP was well absorbed and extensively metabolized by multiple enzymes to various metabolites prior to urinary excretion.
High Resolution Photoacoustic System Based on Acoustic Lens with Negative Refractive Index

As a new nondestructive biophotonic technology, taking the ultrasonic wave as the media, opto-acoustic tomography is a kind of imaging method based on the differences of optical absorption within the biological organization. With an analysis on the loss of the high-frequency information containing image details resulted from the decay of the evanescent wave in the traditional acoustic lens in the current opto-acoustic tomography system, a study is conducted in this paper by using the lens with negative refractive index to make the evanescent wave participate in the imaging process, and break through the diffraction limit of the traditional acoustic lens, so as to greatly improve the resolution of image. Moreover, according to the characteristics of ultrasonic wave produced in opto-acoustic effect, the relevant theory of acoustic information system and three-dimensional acoustic imaging technology are supplemented and developed in the study. In addition, a set of comparative experiment is done on the imaging effect between the traditional lens and the lens designed in this paper, and the experiment shows that the imaging effect of opto-acoustic tomography within the biological organization got by the designed lens greatly beyond that of the traditional lens.
Self-gravitating radiation in AdS(d)

We study spherically symmetric equilibrium configurations of self-gravitating massless thermal radiation in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space. In d=4, it was shown by Page and Phillips that there is a maximum red-shifted temperature, maximum mass and maximum entropy. For higher central densities, the temperature, mass and entropy undergo an infinite series of damped oscillations, corresponding to unstable configurations. We extend this work to all dimensions $d\geq 3$. We find that in $4\leq d\leq 10$, the behaviour is similar to the d=4 case. In $d\geq 11$, the temperature, mass and entropy are monotonic functions of the central density, asymptoting to their maxima as the central density goes to infinity. In d=3, an exact solution is given by a slice of the AdS C-metric.
A Predictive Model of the Oxygen and Heme Regulatory Network in Yeast

Deciphering gene regulatory mechanisms through the analysis of high-throughput expression data is a challenging computational problem. Previous computational studies have used large expression datasets in order to resolve fine patterns of coexpression, producing clusters or modules of potentially coregulated genes. These methods typically examine promoter sequence information, such as DNA motifs or transcription factor occupancy data, in a separate step after clustering. We needed an alternative and more integrative approach to study the oxygen regulatory network in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a small dataset of perturbation experiments. Mechanisms of oxygen sensing and regulation underlie many physiological and pathological processes, and only a handful of oxygen regulators have been identified in previous studies. We used a new machine learning algorithm called MEDUSA to uncover detailed information about the oxygen regulatory network using genome-wide expression changes in response to perturbations in the levels of oxygen, heme, Hap1, and Co2+. MEDUSA integrates mRNA expression, promoter sequence, and ChIP-chip occupancy data to learn a model that accurately predicts the differential expression of target genes in held-out data. We used a novel margin-based score to extract significant condition-specific regulators and assemble a global map of the oxygen sensing and regulatory network. This network includes both known oxygen and heme regulators, such as Hap1, Mga2, Hap4, and Upc2, as well as many new candidate regulators. MEDUSA also identified many DNA motifs that are consistent with previous experimentally identified transcription factor binding sites. Because MEDUSA's regulatory program associates regulators to target genes through their promoter sequences, we directly tested the predicted regulators for OLE1, a gene specifically induced under hypoxia, by experimental analysis of the activity of its promoter. In each case, deletion of the candidate regulator resulted in the predicted effect on promoter activity, confirming that several novel regulators identified by MEDUSA are indeed involved in oxygen regulation. MEDUSA can reveal important information from a small dataset and generate testable hypotheses for further experimental analysis. Supplemental data are included.