Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Help is on the way: patterns of responses to resource requests on facebook

Research suggests that social network sites can support social capital exchanges, which are often triggered by requests for assistance, such as seeking recommendations or asking for favors. Responsiveness to these requests for help is important to study because these interactions have the potential to affect users' overall satisfaction with the experience of using SNSs, signal social grooming functions that are an essential part of relationship maintenance, and affect social capital processes. In this paper, we study a corpus of public status updates posted to Facebook (N=7,466) in order to identify the pattern of responses to status updates that attempt to mobilize resources from the poster's Facebook network. Findings suggest that mobilization requests are treated differently than other kinds of posts; posts that attempt to mobilize help receive more comments than non-mobilization attempts. Additionally, responses occur more quickly and are shaped by the type of support requested (e.g., a recommendation vs. a favor). These findings help us better understand the role of help-seeking behaviors in the social capital conversion process as it unfolds via social media.
Genetic Control and Comparative Genomic Analysis of Flowering Time in Setaria (Poaceae)

We report the first study on the genetic control of flowering in Setaria, a panicoid grass closely related to switchgrass, and in the same subfamily as maize and sorghum. A recombinant inbred line mapping population derived from a cross between domesticated Setaria italica (foxtail millet) and its wild relative Setaria viridis (green millet), was grown in eight trials with varying environmental conditions to identify a small number of quantitative trait loci (QTL) that control differences in flowering time. Many of the QTL across trials colocalize, suggesting that the genetic control of flowering in Setaria is robust across a range of photoperiod and other environmental factors. A detailed comparison of QTL for flowering in Setaria, sorghum, and maize indicates that several of the major QTL regions identified in maize and sorghum are syntenic orthologs with Setaria QTL, although the maize large effect QTL on chromosome 10 is not. Several Setaria QTL intervals had multiple LOD peaks and were composed of multiple syntenic blocks, suggesting that observed QTL represent multiple tightly linked loci. Candidate genes from flowering time pathways identified in rice and Arabidopsis were identified in Setaria QTL intervals, including those involved in the CONSTANS photoperiod pathway. However, only three of the approximately seven genes cloned for flowering time in maize colocalized with Setaria QTL. This suggests that variation in flowering time in separate grass lineages is controlled by a combination of conserved and lineage specific genes.
Combining Dynamic Program Viewing and Testing in Early Computing Courses

Dynamic program viewing is a form of visual verification in which a student executes one or more statements in a program and interactively observes the behavior in basic viewers (e.g., an object with its fields) and/or conceptual viewers (e.g., the structural display of binary search tree). This activity can be extremely useful from a program understanding perspective as well as a debugging perspective. In contrast, testing (e.g., with JUnit) provides a way to create persistent test cases and then run and re-run them in an efficient way. We have observed that dynamic program viewing and testing are quite complementary. When test cases are written and executed, dynamic program viewing becomes a valuable aid in traditional debugging as well. Since most test cases are written at the functional level (e.g., did a method return the expected value? ), dynamically viewing test methods as they execute can provide students with a deeper level of understanding. The jGRASP IDE has been extended to allow students to combine dynamic program viewing with JUnit testing. In this paper, we discuss both the technical success of this effort and several examples that demonstrate the potential for student use in early computing courses.
Coupling GIS with CFD modeling to simulate urban pollutant dispersion

An integrated strategy incorporating computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and GIS technologies is proposed to simulate the flow fields and associated concentration distributions from contaminant releases in complex urban settings. CFD is able to provide realistic simulations for geometrically complex scenarios, however, inadequate of geometry construction for urban scale applications. The present work focuses on how to take advantage of the available geospatial data, the visualization and discretization capabilities of GIS in CFD modeling. Topography and building data stored in GIS databases are used to extract the detailed coordinates and heights of the buildings around the area of interest. Then the methodology of domain discretization, with restrict to underneath geometrical boundary, is proposed to generate computational grids for CFD simulations. For illustration purposes, a mixed residential and commercial area of Lujiazui located in Shanghai is investigated. The numerical output can be rendered dynamically in GIS environment.
Emofilt: the simulation of emotional speech by prosody-transformation

Emofilt is a software program intended to simulate emotional arousal with speech synthesis based on the free-for-noncommercial-use MBROLA synthesis engine. It acts as a transformer between the phonetisation and the speech-generation component. Originally developed at the Technical University of Berlin it was recently revived as an open-source project written in Java (http://emofilt.sourceforge.net). Emofilt’s languagedependent modules are controlled by external XML-files and it is as multilingual as MBROLA which currently supports 35 languages. It might be used for research, teaching or to implement applications that include the simulation of emotional speech.
Local Ontology Based Semantic Query Decomposition Algorithm

Aiming at algorithm limitations and lower recall rate of query decomposition, a query decomposition algorithm based on FWR expressions of ontology XQuery is proposed. In this algorithm, after writed query language the global by XQuery, in the three stages of the FWR expression global ontology-based query is decomposed into sub-queries for the local body. The Algorithm reduces the complexity of the query decomposition, ensures the semantic integrity, and then increases the recall rate. An illustrative example as well as the experimental results demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Feeling disability: theories of affect and critical disability studies

Abstract This paper explores connections between affect studies and critical disability studies. Our interest in affect is sparked by the beginnings of a new research project that seeks to illuminate the lives, hopes and desires of young people with ‘life-limiting’ or ‘life-threatening’ impairments. Cultural responses to these young people are shaped by dominant discourses associated with lives lived well and long. Before commencing our empirical work with young people we use this paper to think through how we might conceptualise affect and disability. We present three themes; ontological invalidation in neoliberal-able times; affect aliens and crip killjoys; disability and resistant assemblages.
Design and implementation of a secure RFID system on FPGA

Radio Frequency Identification systems have been widely used in many applications nowadays. Since then, data security has been an important issue in RFID communication in order to prevent undesired people to decrypt communication data. Considering the problem, a secure RFID system is designed in this study. An RFID communication at 868MHz is demonstrated by programming transceiver modules via Spartan3E FPGA Kits. To increase communication security between reader and tag, 2-stage authentication protocol is preferred. Tiny Encryption Algorith (TEA) module is used as IP Core in FPGA to provide data encryption and sistem design has been completed.
Relations between transit time, fermentation products, and hydrogen consuming flora in healthy humans.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To investigate whether transit time could influence H2 consuming flora and certain indices of colonic bacterial fermentation. METHODS: Eight healthy volunteers (four methane excretors and four non-methane excretors) were studied for three, three week periods during which they received a controlled diet alone (control period), and then the same diet with cisapride or loperamide. At the end of each period, mean transit time (MTT) was estimated, an H2 lactulose breath test was performed, and stools were analysed. RESULTS: In the control period, transit time was inversely related to faecal weight, sulphate reducing bacteria counts, concentrations of total short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), propionic and butyric acids, and H2 excreted in breath after lactulose ingestion. Conversely, transit time was positively related to faecal pH and tended to be related to methanogen counts. Methanogenic bacteria counts were inversely related to those of sulphate reducing bacteria and methane excretors had slower MTT and lower sulphate reducing bacteria counts than non-methane excretors. Compared with the control period, MTT was significantly shortened (p < 0.05) by cisapride and prolonged (p < 0.05) by loperamide (73 (11) hours, 47 (5) hours and 147 (12) hours for control, cisapride, and loperamide, respectively, mean (SD)). Cisapride reduced transit time was associated with (a) a significant rise in faecal weight, sulphate reducing bacteria, concentrations of total SCFAs, and propionic and butyric acids and breath H2 as well as (b) a significant fall in faecal pH and breath CH4 excretion, and (c) a non-significant decrease in the counts of methanogenic bacteria. Reverse relations were roughly the same during the loperamide period including a significant rise in the counts of methanogenic bacteria and a significant fall in those of sulphate reducing bacteria. CONCLUSIONS: Transit time differences between healthy volunteers are associated with differences in H2 consuming flora and certain indices of colonic fermentation. Considering the effects of some fermentation products on intestinal morphology and function, these variations may be relevant to the pathogenesis of colorectal diseases.
Studies on Porcine Circovirus Type 2 Vaccination of 5-Day-Old Piglets

ABSTRACT Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) vaccines have become widely used since they became available in 2006. It is not uncommon for producers to use PCV2 vaccines in pigs younger than what is approved by manufacturers. The objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of a chimeric and a subunit PCV2 vaccine administered at 5 or 21 days of age. Forty-eight PCV2-naïve piglets were randomly divided into six groups of eight pigs each. Vaccination was done at day 5 or day 21, followed by triple challenge with PCV2, porcine parvovirus (PPV), and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) at day 49. Vaccinated pigs seroconverted to PCV2 approximately 14 days postvaccination and had a detectable neutralizing antibody response by 21 days postvaccination regardless of age at vaccination. At day 49, the pigs vaccinated with the chimeric vaccine had significantly higher levels of neutralizing antibodies than the pigs vaccinated with the subunit vaccine. After challenge, vaccinated pigs had significantly decreased levels of PCV2 viremia and a decreased prevalence and severity of microscopic lesions compared to the positive-control group, which had severe lymphoid lesions associated with abundant PCV2 antigen, compatible with PCV-associated disease. The results of this study indicate that, under the conditions of this study, vaccination of PCV2-naïve pigs at day 5 or day 21 resulted in development of a detectable humoral immune response and provided reduction or complete protection against PCV2 viremia and PCV2-associated lesions after triple challenge with PCV2, PPV, and PRRSV.
Effects of acidic amino acid antagonists upon the spectral properties of carp horizontal cells: circuitry of the outer retina

The acidic amino acid receptor antagonists, alpha-methylglutamate and alpha-aminoadipate, were applied to the carp retina to study their effects upon the spectral properties of horizontal cells and to elucidate the synaptic connections between horizontal cells and cones. Application of these antagonists strongly hyperpolarized the L-type cone horizontal cells and reduced the responses of these horizontal cells to red light more than to blue light. Application of Co2+ ions to the retina, a procedure which decreases transmitter release, also hyperpolarized the L-type cone horizontal cells but reduced the response of these horizontal cells to red and blue lights equally. These results suggest that red- or long wavelength-sensitive cones release a different transmitter onto L-type cone horizontal cells than do short wavelength-sensitive cones. Application of the acidic amino acid antagonists also revealed details of the feedback pathway from L- type cone horizontal cells to cones. Previous studies have shown that feedback varies directly with stimulus size and that the effects of feedback on the responses of cones are observed as a transient waveform at response onset (a large, hyperpolarizing potential that is quickly followed by a smaller plateau potential). Application of the acidic amino acid antagonists at a dose which partially hyperpolarized the horizontal cells selectively enhanced the response of the cells to blue lights, when full field, and not spot, stimuli were used. The antagonists also eliminated the transient at response onset. These findings are consistent with the presence of a feedback pathway from L- type cone horizontal cells to short wavelength cones but not to long (red-sensitive) cones.
An Efficient Clustering Technique for Message Passing B etween Data Points using Affinity Propagation

─ A wide range of clustering algorithms is available in literature and still an open area for researcher’s k-means algorithm is one of the basic and most simple partitioning clustering technique is given by Macqueen in 1967. A new clustering algorithm used in this paper is affinity propagation. The number of cluster k has been supplied by the user and the Affinity propagation found clusters with much lower error than other methods, and it did so in less than one-hundredth the amount of time between data point. In this paper we make analysis on cluster algorithm k-means, efficient k-means, and affinity propagation with colon dataset. And the result of affinity propagation shows much lower error when compare with other algorithm and the average accuracy is good.
Policy Transition of Reinforcement Learning for an Agent Based SCM System

Reinforcement learning (RL) is successfully applied to some dynamical and unpredictable domains. The Supply Chain Management (SCM) is NP-hard problem. Some proposed RL methods perform better than traditional tools for dynamic problem solving in SCM. It realizes on-line learning and performs efficiently in some applications, but RL agent reacts worse than some heuristic methods to sudden changes in SCM demand since the trial-and-error characteristic of RL is time-consuming in practice. By surveying an efficient policy transition mechanism in RL about how to mapping existing policies in the previous task to a new policies in a changed task, this paper proposes a novel RL agent based SCM system that decreases learning time of the RL agent to a dynamic environment. As the result, the RL agent derives the maximal profit using RL technique as jobs coming with a stable distribution. Further, the RL agent makes the optimal procurement satisfying the requirement of sudden changes in the supply chain network by the policy transition mechanism.
A new development of public key cryptosystem

A public-key encryption algorithm and a practical hybrid scheme are proposed in this paper. This algorithm uses the advanced transform techniques, i.e. the Number Theoretic Transforms (NTTs) to diffuse data, and uses a non-linear technique based on the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) to confuse data. The main advantage of the proposed algorithm is its high efficiency and capability. The plaintext can be encrypted in blocks in parallel, thus saves computational time. The proposed algorithm also can be easily applied in a hybrid scheme for practical applications.
Health in hand: Putting mHealth design in context

Wireless technologies, cloud computing and connectivity have enabled mobile services that extend the coverage of health services, resulting in a branch of eHealth now commonly referred to as mHealth. However, at least in Sweden, where the healthcare sector is heavily institutionalized and regulated, mHealth has so far mainly evolved in the form of applications for support of healthy life-style and self-management of chronic diseases, implemented outside of the firewalls of traditional healthcare delivery environments. In this paper we present an on-going Indo-Swedish research and development project in which we are putting mHealth design into context both from a patient's perspective and from the perspective of a healthcare team working within a professional healthcare organization. Our research approach is inspired by the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design of ICT and informed by studies of how to measure usability, user experience and impact of mHealth interventions. The involved research teams are multi-disciplinary, including researchers from engineering, computing and health sciences. The project includes, on the Swedish side, a partner from the public healthcare sector, three SME:s and an industrial partner who is currently providing Electronic Patient Record and other healthcare information system solutions and who is interested in developing mobile solutions for healthcare professionals. We are currently in the process of collaborative articulation and specification of problems, goals and requirements within the framework of the first Swedish case study of the project, focused on mobile support for patients with diabetes type 2 and their healthcare teams.
Icebreaker NUIs: Encouraging Social Conversations Around Interactive Urban Spaces

Interaction with digitally augmented urban spaces has increasingly relied upon Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) to achieve low-entry levels for the interaction and promote social encounters. In this paper, we discuss two interactive interventions we developed using NUIs for activating two very distinct urban spaces. Despite their highly different contexts and content strategies – one informational, the other playful – we observed that both prompted similar collaborative behaviour among participants, who engaged in conversations with other participants via their digital representation on the screens. To better understand the observed interactions we present a comparative analysis of the two interactive scenarios.
Increased Short-Term Fluctuation in Optic Nerve Head Blood Flow in a Case of Normal-Tension Glaucoma by the Use of Laser Speckle Flowgraphy

An 80-year-old woman with normal-tension glaucoma was transferred to our clinic 9 years ago. She exhibited progressive visual field defect despite intraocular pressure in both eyes remaining stable in the low teens after treatment with prostaglandin-derivative eye drops. Increased short-term fluctuation in optic nerve head (ONH) blood flow was detected using laser speckle flowgraphy. After the patient was administered kallidinogenase tablets, the fluctuation was reduced and her visual field defect was ameliorated. However, the fluctuation increased and the visual field defect deteriorated after the patient discontinued the medication. The increased short-term fluctuation in ONH blood flow seemed to be associated with the development of glaucomatous visual field defect in this case.
Spherical membranes in Matrix theory

We consider membranes of spherical topology in uncompactified Matrix theory. In general for large membranes Matrix theory reproduces the classical membrane dynamics up to 1/N corrections; for certain simple membrane configurations, the equations of motion agree exactly at finite N . We derive a general formula for the one-loop Matrix potential between two finite-sized objects at large separations. Applied to a graviton interacting with a round spherical membrane, we show that the Matrix potential agrees with the naive supergravity potential for large N , but differs at subleading orders in N . The result is quite general: we prove a pair of theorems showing that for large N , after removing the effects of gravitational radiation, the one-loop potential between classical Matrix configurations agrees with the long-distance potential expected from supergravity. As a spherical membrane shrinks, it eventually becomes a black hole. This provides a natural framework to study Schwarzschild black holes in Matrix theory.
Going with the flow: email awareness and task management

Email use in the context of everyday work practices, or email flow, has not been heavily studied. We present the results of a pair of studies examining how users interlace email with their day-to-day, ongoing work processes. We demonstrate that our subjects use email as a tool for managing moment-to-moment attention and task focus. We also provide a model of this workflow that builds upon an existing model by Venolia et al. Finally, we provide specific design recommendations to enhance the usability of email clients in support of these modes of interaction.
Uric acid level as a risk factor for cardiovascular and all-cause mortality in middle-aged men: a prospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND Despite abundant epidemiologic evidence, the role of elevated serum uric acid level as a cardiovascular risk factor is controversial. We assessed the predictive value of serum uric acid levels for cardiovascular and overall mortality. METHODS A population-based prospective cohort study was performed of 1423 middle-aged Finnish men initially without cardiovascular disease, cancer, or diabetes. The main outcome measure was death from cardiovascular disease and any cause. RESULTS The mean follow-up was 11.9 years. There were 157 deaths during follow-up, of which 55 were cardiovascular. In age-adjusted analyses, serum uric acid levels in the upper third were associated with a greater than 2.5-fold higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease than levels in the lower third. Taking into account cardiovascular risk factors and variables commonly associated with gout increased the relative risk to 3.73. Further adjustment for factors related to the metabolic syndrome strengthened the risk to 4.77. Excluding the 53 men using diuretics did not alter the results. In age-adjusted analyses, men with serum uric acid levels in the upper third were 1.7-fold more likely to die of any cause than men with levels in the lower third. Adjustment for further risk factors strengthened the association somewhat. CONCLUSIONS Serum uric acid levels are a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease mortality in healthy middle-aged men, independent of variables commonly associated with gout or the metabolic syndrome. Serum uric acid measurement is an easily available and inexpensive risk marker, but whether its relationship to cardiovascular events is circumstantial or causal remains to be answered.