Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VICTIM/OFFENDER CONTACT AND REPEAT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMIZATION

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between victim/offender contact and repeat domestic violence. Over 5,000 police incident reports were collected from a large, urban police department between August 2001 and August 2002. Several measures of victim/offender contact were used, including cohabitation, co-parenting, restraining order status, and victim employment. Findings suggest that certain victims are at a greater risk of repeat victimization than others, specifically those who have children in common with the offender and those who obtain a restraining order against the offender. Findings also suggest that most repeat victims are repeatedly victimized by the same offender, and the types of victimization they suffer vary over time, with an increase in aggravated assault and restraining order violations as victimizations increase in frequency. Implications of these findings are discussed, and suggestions are offered for further research on repeat domestic violence.
Democratizing Local Governance? The Ley de Participación Popular and the Social Construction of Citizenship in Bolivia

The article develops a theoretical framework to analyse the social construction of citizenship at the local level in Bolivia through the Ley de Participación Popular (LPP). It explains how decentralization at the municipal level and the introduction of participatory mechanisms affect the development of civil society in Bolivia. I argue that decentralization at the city level can provide new formal spaces for the development of civil society in relation with the state, which can in turn foster the social construction of a more inclusive citizenship regime. Many factors, however, determine if such potential is exploited. Drawing from the Bolivian experience, the article elaborates on the socio-political conditions necessary for local governance to have a positive impact on citizenship. It shows that the institutional shortcomings of the LPP, an elite-driven reform adopted in a country with a legacy of weak institutions and civil society, posed fundamental limits for social participation at the municipal level to lead to the social construction of an inclusive citizenship regime.
Entropy and choice time: The effect of frequency unbalance on choice-response

Abstract A human subject making a sequence of choice-responses is considered as a channel transmitting information. Earlier work suggests that the rate of transmission is limited, and so that response time is proportional to the “entropy” of the source of signals. Entropy is reduced by unbalance in the relative frequency of the possible signals according to the formula, sum (p log p). Unbalance should therefore reduce average response time This prediction is tested in a card-sorting task. The subjects sorted playing-cards into classes in various ways; times taken were proportional to calculated entropy-per-card. Departures from the expected results occurred and were found to be due to differences in perceptual difficulty of discriminations. Some incidental results are mentioned.
A statistical framework for Illumina DNA methylation arrays

MOTIVATION The Illumina BeadArray is a popular platform for profiling DNA methylation, an important epigenetic event associated with gene silencing and chromosomal instability. However, current approaches rely on an arbitrary detection P-value cutoff for excluding probes and samples from subsequent analysis as a quality control step, which results in missing observations and information loss. It is desirable to have an approach that incorporates the whole data, but accounts for the different quality of individual observations. RESULTS We first investigate and propose a statistical framework for removing the source of biases in Illumina Methylation BeadArray based on several positive control samples. We then introduce a weighted model-based clustering called LumiWCluster for Illumina BeadArray that weights each observation according to the detection P-values systematically and avoids discarding subsets of the data. LumiWCluster allows for discovery of distinct methylation patterns and automatic selection of informative CpG loci. We demonstrate the advantages of LumiWCluster on two publicly available Illumina GoldenGate Methylation datasets (ovarian cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma). AVAILABILITY R package LumiWCluster can be downloaded from http://www.unc. edu/∼pfkuan/LumiWCluster.
A Real-Time Big Data Analysis Framework on a CPU/GPU Heterogeneous Cluster: A Meteorological Application Case Study

It is important to analyze and predict meteorological phenomena in real-time. Parallel programming by exploiting thousands of threads in GPUs can be efficiently used to speed up the execution of many applications. However, GPUs have limitations when used for processing big data, which can be better analyzed using distributed computing platforms such as Hadoop and Spark. In this paper, we propose DAMB a system that processes streamed data on a heterogeneous cluster of CPUs and GPUs in real-time. The core of DAMB is SparkGPU, a platform that extends Apache Spark to allow it to manage a heterogeneous cluster that has both CPUs and GPUs and to execute tasks on GPUs. DAMB also provides data visualization tools that present the analyzed data in an interactive way in real-time. As a case study, we focus on a meteorological application that analyzes lightening discharges. We show that DAMB can successfully process and analyze the meteorological data streamed to it and visualize the results in real-time on a cluster of size 12 nodes, each is equipped with one or more GPU cards. This is a speedup of two orders of magnitude as compared to a sequential program implementation for the same application.
The effects of baseline characteristics, glycaemia treatment approach, and glycated haemoglobin concentration on the risk of severe hypoglycaemia: post hoc epidemiological analysis of the ACCORD study

Objectives To investigate potential determinants of severe hypoglycaemia, including baseline characteristics, in the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) trial and the association of severe hypoglycaemia with levels of glycated haemoglobin (haemoglobin A1C) achieved during therapy. Design Post hoc epidemiological analysis of a double 2×2 factorial, randomised, controlled trial. Setting Diabetes clinics, research clinics, and primary care clinics. Participants 10 209 of the 10 251 participants enrolled in the ACCORD study with type 2 diabetes, a haemoglobin A1C concentration of 7.5% or more during screening, and aged 40-79 years with established cardiovascular disease or 55-79 years with evidence of significant atherosclerosis, albuminuria, left ventricular hypertrophy, or two or more additional risk factors for cardiovascular disease (dyslipidaemia, hypertension, current smoker, or obese). Interventions Intensive (haemoglobin A1C <6.0%) or standard (haemoglobin A1C 7.0-7.9%) glucose control. Main outcome measures Severe hypoglycaemia was defined as episodes of “low blood glucose” requiring the assistance of another person and documentation of either a plasma glucose less than 2.8 mmol/l (<50 mg/dl) or symptoms that promptly resolved with oral carbohydrate, intravenous glucose, or glucagon. Results The annual incidence of hypoglycaemia was 3.14% in the intensive treatment group and 1.03% in the standard glycaemia group. We found significantly increased risks for hypoglycaemia among women (P=0.0300), African-Americans (P<0.0001 compared with non-Hispanic whites), those with less than a high school education (P<0.0500 compared with college graduates), aged participants (P<0.0001 per 1 year increase), and those who used insulin at trial entry (P<0.0001). For every 1% unit decline in the haemoglobin A1C concentration from baseline to 4 month visit, there was a 28% (95% CI 19% to 37%) and 14% (4% to 23%) reduced risk of hypoglycaemia requiring medical assistance in the standard and intensive groups, respectively. In both treatment groups, the risk of hypoglycaemia requiring medical assistance increased with each 1% unit increment in the average updated haemoglobin A1C concentration (standard arm: hazard ratio 1.76, 95% CI 1.50 to 2.06; intensive arm: hazard ratio 1.15, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.21). Conclusions A greater drop in haemoglobin A1C concentration from baseline to the 4 month visit was not associated with an increased risk for hypoglycaemia. Patients with poorer glycaemic control had a greater risk of hypoglycaemia, irrespective of treatment group. Identification of baseline subgroups with increased risk for severe hypoglycaemia can provide guidance to clinicians attempting to modify patient therapy on the basis of individual risk. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT00000620.
Development of Block-Cipher Library for Reconfigurable Computers

Reconfigurable computing is gaining rising attention as an alternative to traditional processing for many applications. Data encryption and decryption is one of these applications, which can get tremendous speedup running on FPGAs instead of microprocessors. We have developed a block-cipher library that covers 15 most popular encryption algorithms, and generated 35 bitstreams running on the SGI's latest version of a reconfigurable computer, RASCRC-100. The end- to-end throughput of 1.136 GB/s have been demonstrated for almost all ciphers, and was limited only by the input/output interface, rather than the FPGA processing time. The library is written in Verilog-HDL, and can be easily ported to other reconfigurable computing platforms. It provides means for cryptographers and computer scientists to program reconfigurable computers without the need for detailed knowledge of hardware design.
COMPUTING Using Metrics to Evaluate Software Svstem

In this month’s Computing Practices we offer a sneak preview of Computer‘s September issue on software metrics. Software metrics have been much criticized in the last few years, sometimes justly but more often unjustly, because critics misunderstand the intent behind the technology. Software complexity metrics, for example, rarely measure the “inherent complexity“ embedded in software systems, but they do a very good job of comparing the relative complexity of one portion of a system with another. In essence, they are good modeling tools. Whether they are also good measuring tools depends on how consistently and appropriately they are applied. The two articles showcased here suggest ways of applying such metrics. Our first article, by Don Coleman et al., sets forth maintainability metrics for gauging the effect of maintenance changes in software systems, rank ordering subsystem complexity, and comparing the “quality” of two different systems.
Is accurate occlusion of glossy reflections necessary?

Much research in recent times has been conducted towards real-time rendering of accurate glossy reflections under direct, natural illumination including correct occlusions. The view dependent nature of these reflections will always cause this computation to be expensive unless heavily approximated. There also remains a question as to whether humans are even capable of noticing the difference in accuracy or whether our perception of the realism of the scene remains unchanged and thus the extra effort expended in rendering accurate reflections is effectively wasted. We conduct a user study to analyse any decline in perceived realism of glossy scenes rendered with a variety of specular occlusion approximations under a multitude of BRDFs, lighting environments and camera orientations. We demonstrate that although no one approximation is always suitable, it is rare to have a scene whose computational complexity cannot be decreased to some degree.
Developing a Time Series Predictive Model for Dengue in Zhongshan, China Based on Weather and Guangzhou Dengue Surveillance Data

Background Dengue is a re-emerging infectious disease of humans, rapidly growing from endemic areas to dengue-free regions due to favorable conditions. In recent decades, Guangzhou has again suffered from several big outbreaks of dengue; as have its neighboring cities. This study aims to examine the impact of dengue epidemics in Guangzhou, China, and to develop a predictive model for Zhongshan based on local weather conditions and Guangzhou dengue surveillance information. Methods We obtained weekly dengue case data from 1st January, 2005 to 31st December, 2014 for Guangzhou and Zhongshan city from the Chinese National Disease Surveillance Reporting System. Meteorological data was collected from the Zhongshan Weather Bureau and demographic data was collected from the Zhongshan Statistical Bureau. A negative binomial regression model with a log link function was used to analyze the relationship between weekly dengue cases in Guangzhou and Zhongshan, controlling for meteorological factors. Cross-correlation functions were applied to identify the time lags of the effect of each weather factor on weekly dengue cases. Models were validated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and k-fold cross-validation. Results Our results showed that weekly dengue cases in Zhongshan were significantly associated with dengue cases in Guangzhou after the treatment of a 5 weeks prior moving average (Relative Risk (RR) = 2.016, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.845–2.203), controlling for weather factors including minimum temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall. ROC curve analysis indicated our forecasting model performed well at different prediction thresholds, with 0.969 area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for a threshold of 3 cases per week, 0.957 AUC for a threshold of 2 cases per week, and 0.938 AUC for a threshold of 1 case per week. Models established during k-fold cross-validation also had considerable AUC (average 0.938–0.967). The sensitivity and specificity obtained from k-fold cross-validation was 78.83% and 92.48% respectively, with a forecasting threshold of 3 cases per week; 91.17% and 91.39%, with a threshold of 2 cases; and 85.16% and 87.25% with a threshold of 1 case. The out-of-sample prediction for the epidemics in 2014 also showed satisfactory performance. Conclusion Our study findings suggest that the occurrence of dengue outbreaks in Guangzhou could impact dengue outbreaks in Zhongshan under suitable weather conditions. Future studies should focus on developing integrated early warning systems for dengue transmission including local weather and human movement.
Enhancement of the Iterative Spectrum Balancing Algorithm for Power Allocation in DSL Systems

The optimization of power allocation in DSL systems is a well studied non-convex problem. In recent years many algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem, but due to the non-convexity, researchers had to rely on heuristic, or exhaustive search algorithms. Iterative spectrum balancing (ISB) is one of these algorithms, that relies on iterative exhaustive search over individual power to achieve the optimization. In this paper we propose to take advantage of an approximate gradient model to reduce the complexity of ISB. Furthermore techniques such as the additional starting point (ASP) and successive optimization are used to bring the result closer to the global optimum.
Scalable resilience for Software-Defined Networking using Loop-Free Alternates with loop detection

In this paper we propose a novel resilience scheme for OpenFlow-based Software-Defined Networking (SDN). To forward packets in line speed, OpenFlow switches store their flow tables in expensive, limited TCAM due to which the stored tables cannot be large. Most resilience mechanisms require additional entries thus the implementation in OpenFlow may quickly exceed the available TCAM. Loop-Free Alternates (LFAs) are a standardized mechanism for fast reroute in IP networks which do not require additional entries. However, LFAs cannot protect against all single link and node failures. Moreover, some LFAs even cause loops in case of some node failures or multiple failures, making additional links unusable. Excluding such LFAs reduces the fraction of protected destinations (protection coverage) in nodes even further. We suggest a scheme for detection of loops caused by LFAs. It maximizes the protection coverage because it allows all LFAs to be used without creating loops. We describe how LFAs and the loop detection scheme can be implemented in OpenFlow networks with only little packet overhead and a single additional entry per switch. We evaluate our proposal on real network topologies of varying size and connectivity. In particular, we quantify the benefit gained from loop detection. Amongst others, we study the percentage of failures that cannot be protected by LFAs at all, and the percentage of failures in which conventional LFAs cause extra loops.
Theory and applications of neural maps

In this tutorial paper about neural maps we review the current state in theoretical aspects like mathematical treatment of convergence, ordering and topography, magnification and others. Therby we concentrate on two well-known examples: Self-Organizing Maps and Neural Gas. Moreover we briefly reflect outstanding applications showing the power of neural maps.
MicroRNA maturation: stepwise processing and subcellular localization

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute a novel, phylogenetically extensive family of small RNAs (∼22 nucleotides) with potential roles in gene regulation. Apart from the finding that miRNAs are produced by Dicer from the precursors of ∼70 nucleotides (pre‐miRNAs), little is known about miRNA biogenesis. Some miRNA genes have been found in close conjunction, suggesting that they are expressed as single transcriptional units. Here, we present in vivo and in vitro evidence that these clustered miRNAs are expressed polycistronically and are processed through at least two sequential steps: (i) generation of the ∼70 nucleotide pre‐miRNAs from the longer transcripts (termed pri‐miRNAs); and (ii) processing of pre‐miRNAs into mature miRNAs. Subcellular localization studies showed that the first and second steps are compartmentalized into the nucleus and cytoplasm, respectively, and that the pre‐miRNA serves as the substrate for nuclear export. Our study suggests that the regulation of miRNA expression may occur at multiple levels, including the two processing steps and the nuclear export step. These data will provide a framework for further studies on miRNA biogenesis.
3D Data Denoising via Nonlocal Means Filter by Using Parallel GPU Strategies

Nonlocal Means (NLM) algorithm is widely considered as a state-of-the-art denoising filter in many research fields. Its high computational complexity leads researchers to the development of parallel programming approaches and the use of massively parallel architectures such as the GPUs. In the recent years, the GPU devices had led to achieving reasonable running times by filtering, slice-by-slice, and 3D datasets with a 2D NLM algorithm. In our approach we design and implement a fully 3D NonLocal Means parallel approach, adopting different algorithm mapping strategies on GPU architecture and multi-GPU framework, in order to demonstrate its high applicability and scalability. The experimental results we obtained encourage the usability of our approach in a large spectrum of applicative scenarios such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or video sequence denoising.
Analysis of New Zealand primary and secondary student peer- and self-assessment comments: applying Hattie and Timperley’s feedback model

Peer- and self-assessment (PASA) can lead to increased student self-regulation and achievement. However, few studies have examined the content of the feedback students in primary and secondary schools provide themselves and their peers. This study used Hattie and Timperley’s task, process, self-regulation and self feedback categories from their Review of Educational Research article ‘The power of feedback’ to (1) examine the content of a sample of naturally occurring student-written PASA comments (n = 471 utterances) and (2) explore the feasibility of using this model with student-generated feedback. Students provided primarily task feedback to both themselves and their peers, with self-regulation feedback only found in self-assessment. Students in higher grades tended to provide more task and process feedback, while giving less self feedback during self-assessment and more during peer assessment. More refinement of the model is recommended for both research and professional development purposes to better capture the quality and complexity of student-led feedback comments.
Managerial motivation and gender roles: a study of females and males in Hong Kong

Chinese women are often perceived as passive, submissive, lacking aggressiveness and a drive to be successful managers. Using a previously validated culturally modified Miner Sentence Completion Scale‐H (for hierarchic), this study compares the motivation to manage a sample of 156 BBA and MBA students in Hong Kong. Results indicate no significant differences between the scores of males and females on the total MSCS‐H or its components, including assertiveness and competitiveness. Gender role differences are not supported by differences in managerial motivation of Hong Kong business students.
Gender Differences in Leader Emergence Persist Even for Dominant Women: An Updated Confirmation of Role Congruity Theory1

Role congruity theory predicts that women will be less likely than men to emerge as leaders when expectations for the leader role are incongruent with gender stereotypes. A 2 × 2 × 3 design that crossed the sex of the dominant partner, mixed- and same-sex dyads, and masculine, feminine, and neutral tasks involved 120 dyads of unacquainted college students in which one partner scored higher in dominance. In same-sex partnerships, the dominant member consistently emerged as leader. In mixed-sex dyads, the gender typing of the task did not influence dominant male ascendance but it did affect women's. When the task was masculine-typed or neutral, less dominant men were more likely to emerge as the leader of the dyad, frequently being appointed by the dominant woman herself. Thus, even when women possess the agentic quality of dominance consistent with the leader role, the incongruence between masculinized task demands and gender stereotypes mitigate against women's leadership emergence.
A Simple Porcine Model of Inducible Sustained Atrial Fibrillation

The surgical management of atrial fibrillation (AF) is an evolving field with a history of testing various lesion sets and ablation technologies. Previous animal models of AF require a chronic intervention to make AF reliably inducible. Our objective was to create an acute, reliable, and reproducible porcine model of sustained AF. To accomplish this, 21 adult domestic pigs underwent median sternotomy. Methods to induce AF were then performed sequentially: manual stimulation, rapid pacing (200 beats per minute), and then rapid pacing of 8 beats with a cycle length of 300 milliseconds, followed by an extra stimulus at decreasing cycle lengths. If AF was not induced, burst pacing was performed at a cycle length of 90 milliseconds for 30 seconds. If AF was still not induced, intravenous neostigmine was administered, and the process was repeated. Atrial fibrillation was considered sustained after 1 minute. Attempts at AF induction were successful in 18 (86%) of 21. Atrial fibrillation was induced during manual stimulation in four (19%), during rapid pacing in five (24%), during burst pacing in five (24%), and after the administration of neostigmine in four (19%). Mean (SD) duration of AF was 3.6 (2.6) minutes. Of the 18, 14 (78%) reverted to sinus rhythm spontaneously and 4 (22%) required an antiarrhythmic. This technique of inducing AF can easily be used to evaluate new technologies and lesion sets without the need for creating a chronic animal model.