Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability of Health Information on the Internet: An Examination of Experts' Ratings

Background The use of medical experts in rating the content of health-related sites on the Internet has flourished in recent years. In this research, it has been common practice to use a single medical expert to rate the content of the Web sites. In many cases, the expert has rated the Internet health information as poor, and even potentially dangerous. However, one problem with this approach is that there is no guarantee that other medical experts will rate the sites in a similar manner. Objectives The aim was to assess the reliability of medical experts' judgments of threads in an Internet newsgroup related to a common disease. A secondary aim was to show the limitations of commonly-used statistics for measuring reliability (eg, kappa). Method The participants in this study were 5 medical doctors, who worked in a specialist unit dedicated to the treatment of the disease. They each rated the information contained in newsgroup threads using a 6-point scale designed by the experts themselves. Their ratings were analyzed for reliability using a number of statistics: Cohen's kappa, gamma, Kendall's W, and Cronbach's alpha. Results Reliability was absent for ratings of questions, and low for ratings of responses. The various measures of reliability used gave conflicting results. No measure produced high reliability. Conclusions The medical experts showed a low agreement when rating the postings from the newsgroup. Hence, it is important to test inter-rater reliability in research assessing the accuracy and quality of health-related information on the Internet. A discussion of the different measures of agreement that could be used reveals that the choice of statistic can be problematic. It is therefore important to consider the assumptions underlying a measure of reliability before using it. Often, more than one measure will be needed for "triangulation" purposes.
Eukaryotic origins

The origin of the eukaryotes is a fundamental scientific question that for over 30 years has generated a spirited debate between the competing Archaea (or three domains) tree and the eocyte tree. As eukaryotes ourselves, humans have a personal interest in our origins. Eukaryotes contain their defining organelle, the nucleus, after which they are named. They have a complex evolutionary history, over time acquiring multiple organelles, including mitochondria, chloroplasts, smooth and rough endoplasmic reticula, and other organelles all of which may hint at their origins. It is the evolutionary history of the nucleus and their other organelles that have intrigued molecular evolutionists, myself included, for the past 30 years and which continues to hold our interest as increasingly compelling evidence favours the eocyte tree. As with any orthodoxy, it takes time to embrace new concepts and techniques.
Projective bundles

A projective bundle in PG(2, q) is a collection of q + q + 1 conics that mutually intersect in a single point and hence form another projective plane of order q. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of partitioning the q5 − q2 conics of PG(2, q) into q2(q − 1) disjoint projective bundles. As a by-product we obtain a multiplier theorem for perfect difference sets that generalizes a portion of Hall’s theorem.
Proposed Security Mechanism for XMPP-Based Communications of ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 Sensor Networks

The ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 standards provide the communication and information models to facilitate the access of smart sensor to a network. ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451-1-4 standard aims to propose a solution using extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) to transport message over sensor networks. Ensuring security of communications over XMPP is one of the most important issues in ISO/IEC/IEEE21451-1-4 sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a security mechanism that deals with the requirements of authentication, integrity, confidentiality, nonrepudiation, and access control. The XMPP-based communications in ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 sensor networks utilize the username/password security token as well as integrated publish/subscribe (pub/sub) and role-based access control technologies. Based on the proposed mechanism, ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 messages are exchanged based on the pub/sub model using an extended security simple object access protocol over XMPP until released. An instance is the model based on ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451-1-4 to secure the XMPP-based communication in sensor network. The result supports the feasibility of the security mechanism for XMPP-based ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 sensor networks.
The Latent Organizational Functions of the Academic Senate: Why Senates Do Not Work but Will Not Go Away.

Academic senates1 are generally considered to be the normative organizational structure through which faculty exercise their role in college and university governance at the institutional level [1]. Although no complete census is available, analysis of data in past studies [23, 25] suggest that senates may exist in one or another form on between 60 to 80 percent of all campuses. With the advent of faculty collective bargaining in the late 1960s, concern was expressed that senates, unable to compete with the more adversarial and aggressive union, might disappear on many campuses [35]. Not only has this prediction proven to be false [5, 6], but there is
Book Review: The Body in Society: An Introduction

struction of the unique and the human, so I am not one to criticize his book on these grounds. The problems with The Globalization of Nothing are theoretical and methodological. Ritzer states that his book is not about nothing per se, but rather about its globalization. And according to the publisher’s blurb that appears on the back cover, “The Globalization of Nothing is ideal as a primary or supplemental text for courses in sociology, anthropology, communication, business, and related disciplines. ” I cannot recommend the book for social science courses, especially those classes concerned with globalization. Too many must-read books preclude assigning students The Globalization of Nothing. The cutting edge approaches in critical globalization studies, such as those by William I. Robinson and Stephen Gill, do not rely on Weberian concepts and methods. To be sure, the book has its strong points. It is well organized and clearly written. The theme is lucid and the concepts are carefully explained. But these strengths—which are expected from somebody with Ritzer’s skill as a writer—only serve to demonstrate plainly that The Globalization of Nothing contributes nothing new to our understanding of globalization.
Effects of natural and anthropogenic stressors on lysosomal destabilization in oysters Crassostrea virginica

Lysosomal destabilization indices (based on a neutral red retention assay) were evaluated for digestive gland cells of oysters Crassostrea virginica. Laboratory studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of variable salinity regimes (a natural stressor) and copper exposures (a pollutant stresSOT) on lysosomal destabilization. Field studies were also conducted with native oysters and hatcheryreared juvenile oysters deployed in situ at reference and polluted sites. Lysosomal integrity was not affected by either short-term or longer-term variations in salinity during laboratory experiments, and the destabilization indices were similar to those of deployed and native oysters from reference sites characterized by a range of salinlties. However, laboratory Cu exposures (ranging from 2.5 to 20 pg Cu 1-') caused significant adverse effects on lysosomal destabilization after only 18 h, and the eiiecis were sustained or worsened with increasing exposure time and concentration. Hatchery-reared oysters deployed at or native oysters collected from polluted sites had significantly higher lysosomal destabilization indices. Estuanne habitats are characterized by variable sal~nity regimes, so cellular responses that are sensitive to salinity stress as well as contaminant stress would be difficult to interpret if salinity effects cannot be distinguished from pollutant effects. A robust biomarker of anthropogenic effects should be insensitive to natural stressors such as salinity, but should be sensitive to pollutants. The salinity and contaminant studies described in this paper indicate that lysosomal destabilization responses in oysters are insensitive to salinity variations and sensitive to pollutants, and are therefore potentially valuable biomarkers of anthropogenic stress.
Does the silastic eustachian tube prosthesis improve eustachian tube function?

This clinical study attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of Eustachian tube function in 30 ears, 11–29 months after insertion of the Silastic® Eustachian tube prosthesis (SETP). Indications for the SETP were limited to persistent Eustachian tube dysfunction. Preoperatively, 13 patients had intact tympanic membranes with persistent serous otitis media. Seventeen patients underwent tympanoplasty and demonstrated persistent serous otitis media in the opposite ear.
Low-level feature fusion models for soccer scene classification

This paper presents an automatic semantic concept extraction method which employs low level visual feature fusion. Both static and dynamic feature fusion approaches are studied and evaluated. The main contributions of this paper are: a novel dynamic feature fusion approach inspired from coding is proposed to create compact yet rich signatures; Statistical study of descriptors with and without fusion. To validate and evaluate our approach, we have conducted a set experiments on the classification of soccer video shots. These experiments show, in particular, that the feature fusion step of our system increases the classification rate of 17% comparing to a system without feature fusion.
IL-12 and IL-18 act in synergy to clear vaccinia virus infection: involvement of innate and adaptive components of the immune system.

Development of a protective host response against intracellular pathogens requires innate and cell-mediated immune responses, with cytokines playing an important role in host defences. Different studies in mice have shown that IL-12 can promote protective immunity to a variety of viruses but, during virus infection, little is known about the in vivo function of IL-18 alone or in combination with IL-12. Using recombinant vaccinia viruses (rVVs) expressing IL-12 and IL-18, the antiviral role of both cytokines in mice has been analysed. The specific anti-VV immune response elicited and the persistence of the virus in target tissues were compared in BALB/c mice inoculated with rVVs expressing IL-12 and IL-18 either singly or in combination. Delivery of IL-12 and IL-18 by rVVs in mice induced a significant enhancement in virus clearance from ovaries and spleen, greater than that expected from the sum of action of both cytokines. Virus clearance involved NK and T cells, as demonstrated in mice depleted of NK cells and in immunodeficient SCID animals. Th1 parameters (CD8(+) T cell response and IgG2a : IgG1 ratios) were increased in mice inoculated with rVVs expressing both IL-12 and IL-18 as compared to those animals receiving a single cytokine. These findings indicate that when IL-12 and IL-18 are delivered by rVVs, different mechanisms involving both the innate and specific arms of the immune system act as mediators in the synergistic action of IL-12 and IL-18, leading to VV clearance. These results are of interest for the design of prophylactic as well as therapeutic VV-based strategies.
Drosophila melanogaster in Diverse patterns of genomic targeting by transcriptional regulators Material Supplemental

Material Supplemental http://genome.cshlp. org/content/suppl/2014/05/21/gr.168807. 113.DC1. html References http://genome.cshlp. org/content/24/7/1224.full. html#ref-list-1 This article cites 75 articles, 27 of which can be accessed free at: Open Access Open Access option. Genome Research Freely available online through the License Commons Creative . http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 License (Attribution 4.0 International), as described at , is available under a Creative Commons Genome Research This article, published in
An Ethic of Caring and Its Implications for Instructional Arrangements

Education for moral life has, until recently, been a primary aim of American schooling. In this essay, it is argued that the aim itself is appropriate but that our conception of morality needs revision. Caring is suggested both as a moral orientation to teaching and as an aim of moral education. After a brief discussion of ethics of caring, four components of a model for moral education are described: modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation. Use of this model requires that teachers and students spend more time together so that relations of trust may be established. Finally, the perspective of caring is used to make recommendations on research for teaching.
Evaluating Crime Prevention: The Potential of Using Individual-Level Matched Control Designs

The relative merits of quasi-experimental area-level place-based evaluations and randomized control trials are the subject of contemporary debate in the criminological literature. Pertinent issues in the application of these approaches to crime prevention include the experimental validity of the former and the real-world practicality of the latter. In this article, we propose a 'middle-ground' and discuss the use of matched control designs and survival analysis conducted at the individual level. This is illustrated using information relating to a target-hardening scheme implemented in the UK. Some advantages of this approach are that it enables the tracking of samples of action and control households over time, does not demand random allocation to groups from the outset and provides insights into the longevity of the impact of measures. Disadvantages lie in the extensive data preparation required and the dependency of the process on detailed records from agencies. Language: en
State Abstraction Discovery from Irrelevant State Variables

Abstraction is a powerful form of domain knowledge that allows reinforcement-learning agents to cope with complex environments, but in most cases a human must supply this knowledge. In the absence of such prior knowledge or a given model, we propose an algorithm for the automatic discovery of state abstraction from policies learned in one domain for use in other domains that have similar structure. To this end, we introduce a novel condition for state abstraction in terms of the relevance of state features to optimal behavior, and we exhibit statistical methods that detect this condition robustly. Finally, we show how to apply temporal abstraction to benefit safely from even partial state abstraction in the presence of generalization error.
The Accrual Anomaly : International Evidence 1

We investigate whether the accruals anomaly (Sloan 1996), characterized by U.S. stock prices over-weighting the role of accrual persistence and under-weighting the role of operating cash flow persistence for future earnings, is a local manifestation of a global phenomenon. Hence, we examine whether stock prices in six other major capital markets and Japan) fully reflect the implications of the accrual and cash flow components of current earnings for future earnings. We find that stock prices in the U.K. and Japan exhib it under-weighting of cash flows, but there is no evidence of an over-weighting of accruals in any of the countries examined. The results suggest that the accruals anomaly may be idiosyncratic to U.S. capital markets.
Pilotage de réseaux stratégiques dans les marchés publics

Cet article montre comment une entreprise peut identifier les reseaux qui lui permettront de former des coalitions pour obtenir des marches publics. Pour cela, nous avons represente, a travers un graphe, le systeme des relations d’alliances de l’annee 2008. Nous avons detecte, dans ce graphe, 1 360 reseaux strategiques dont l’organisation revele, d’une part, des caracteristiques identiques a des reseaux sociaux, et, d’autre part, le role d’acteurs dominants dans l’acces aux ressources. A partir de ces resultats, nous proposons une cartographie des reseaux qui permet d’envisager de nouvelles applications d’intelligence economique.
Shyness as a dimension of personality

Examination of a number of major studies of personality questionnaires reveals the existence of a shyness factor which is related to but separable from both introversion and neuroticism, and which loads on items referring to feeling uncomfortable and self-conscious, and keeping in the background in certain kinds of social situations. The fears that are generally expressed about social situations--of being negatively evaluated and of being socially inadequate--are reflected in subjects' descriptions of the causes of shyness, and these findings suggest a model of shyness in terms of individual differences in susceptibility to threat.
Power functional theory for the dynamic test particle limit

For classical Brownian systems both in and out of equilibrium we extend the power functional formalism of Schmidt and Brader (2013 J. Chem. Phys. 138 214101) to mixtures of different types of particles. We apply the framework to develop an exact dynamical test particle theory for the self and distinct parts of the van Hove function, which characterize tagged and collective particle motion. The memory functions that induce non-Markovian dynamics are related to functional derivatives of the excess (over ideal) free power dissipation functional. The method offers an alternative to the recently found nonequilibrium Ornstein–Zernike relation for dynamic pair correlation functions.
Predictors of whole-body vibration exposure experienced by highway transport truck operators

Whole-body-vibration (WBV) exposure levels experienced by transport truck operators were investigated to determine whether operator's exposure exceeded the 1997 International Standards Organization (ISO) 2631-1 WBV guidelines. A second purpose of the study was to determine which truck characteristics predicted the levels of WBV exposures experienced. The predictor variables selected based on previous literature and our transportation consultant group included road condition, truck type, driver experience, truck mileage and seat type. Tests were conducted on four major highways with 5 min random samples taken every 30 min of travel at speeds greater than or equal to 80 km/h (i.e. highway driving). Results indicated operators were not on average at increased risk of adverse health effects from daily exposures when compared to the ISO WBV guidelines. Significant regression models predicting the frequency-weighted RMS accelerations for the x (F (5,97) = 8.63, p < 0.01), y (F (5,97) = 7.74, p < 0.01), z (F (5,61) = 9.83, p < 0.01) axes and the vector sum of the orthogonal axes (F (5,61) = 13.89, p < 0.01) were observed. Road condition was a significant predictor (p < 0.01) of the frequency-weighted RMS accelerations for all three axes and the vector sum of the axes, as was truck type (p < 0.01) for the z-axis and vector sum. Future research should explore the effects of seasonal driving, larger vehicle age differences, greater variety of seating and suspension systems and team driving situations.
Coevolving Market Strategies for CAT

We perform a preliminary exploration of the market mechanism strategy space in CAT, focusing specifically on the charging policy. In addition to hand-designing several strategies, we also employ coevolutionary policy search to automatically generate novel charging policies. Coevolution is a powerful method for facilitating open-ended search and has been shown to generate robust solutions to complex problems. Furthermore, it can be extended to provide monotonic progress guarantees, allowing for a natural synthesis of guided and open-ended search. Although we are unable to demonstrate evolved strategies that outperform the best hand-designed strategies for a given parameter setting, coevolution has still been useful as a tool for identifying which hand-designed strategies might perform well in a particular setting. This paper summarizes our approach and points out several areas of future work that should be explored to fully characterize the application of coevolution to CAT. Ultimately we believe that by bootstrapping from simpler hand-designed strategies, coevolution can be leveraged to find strategies that perform well in a large variety of environments.
Neonatal Immune Adaptation of the Gut and Its Role during Infections

The intestinal tract is engaged in a relationship with a dense and complex microbial ecosystem, the microbiota. The establishment of this symbiosis is essential for host physiology, metabolism, and immune homeostasis. Because newborns are essentially sterile, the first exposure to microorganisms and environmental endotoxins during the neonatal period is followed by a crucial sequence of active events leading to immune tolerance and homeostasis. Contact with potent immunostimulatory molecules starts immediately at birth, and the discrimination between commensal bacteria and invading pathogens is essential to avoid an inappropriate immune stimulation and/or host infection. The dysregulation of these tight interactions between host and microbiota can be responsible for important health disorders, including inflammation and sepsis. This review summarizes the molecular events leading to the establishment of postnatal immune tolerance and how pathogens can avoid host immunity and induce neonatal infections and sepsis.
Does the ovarian reserve decrease from repeated ovulation stimulations?

Purpose of review The majority of infertility patients require more than one in-vitro fertilization cycles to achieve pregnancy, which results in repeated stimulation in the ovaries. There have been raising concerns for patients about the effect of repetitive assisted reproductive technology (ART) cycles on ovarian response in subsequent cycles. Whether or not there is deterioration in ovarian response with repetitive treatment will allow clinicians to provide better counseling to patients before treatment. Recent findings The single determinant factor that has been shown in affecting ovarian reserve for patients undergoing repeated ART cycles is age. Current evidence has suggested that repetitive ovarian stimulation cycles with intrauterine insemination can be performed without clinically impairing ovarian response. Oocyte donors can be invited for at least three cycles without a negative effect on ovarian response to gonadotropins, number of mature oocytes retrieved, embryo quality, or pregnancy rates. Summary There are limited available published data on this topic. Research studies have shown that there is no detrimental effect on ovarian function of egg donors who undergo repetitive ovarian hyperstimulation. Overall findings also show that there is no significant decline in ovarian reserve in patients who undergo up to three repeated in-vitro fertilization cycles. For patients undertaking more than three cycles, the results become equivocal because age becomes a determinant factor with both pregnancy and live birth rate declining with repetitive cycles.
Interactive Exploration of Gigantic Point Clouds on Mobile Devices

New embedded CPUs that sport powerful graphics chipsets have the potential to make complex 3D applications feasible on mobile devices. In this paper, we present a scalable architecture and its implementation for mobile exploration of large point clouds, which are nowadays ubiquitous in the cultural heritage domain thanks to the increased performance and availability of 3D scanning techniques. The quality and performance of our approach is demonstrated on gigantic point clouds, interactively explored on Apple iPad and iPhone devices using in variety of network settings. Applications of the technology include on-site exploration during scanning campaigns and promotion of cultural heritage artifacts.