Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Creating Shared Memories in Conversation: Toward a Psychology of Collective Memory

Problems of memory are salient in today´s world: struggles by present-day Germans to face the atrocities of the Holocaust, by South Africans to confront the legacy of apartheid, or by East Europeans to deal with those who collaborated with the former communist regimes. ' In each instance, at stake is the form a collective memory of a problematic past takes and the way this memory shapes and reshapes present and future collective identity. Solutions to these problems of memory may not be readily forthcoming, but the questions th at need to be addressed are well appreciated, including: How are collective memories formed, shaped, reshaped, forgotten, and renewed? How can one talk about collective memory in a way that encompasses situations as diverse as the Holocaust, apartheid, and the velvet revolutions, yet still say something meaningful about the concept itself? How do communities shape and reshape the collective memories their members hold? Are there constraints on the power of communities to restructure collective memories? And what is the relation between the memories an individual of a community holds of the past and the collective memories held by the community?
Generic Message Exchange Authentication for the Secure Shell Protocol (SSH)

The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a protocol for secure remote login and other secure network services over an insecure network. This document describes a general purpose authentication method for the SSH protocol, suitable for interactive authentications where the authentication data should be entered via a keyboard (or equivalent alphanumeric input device). The major goal of this method is to allow the SSH client to support a whole class of authentication mechanism(s) without knowing the specifics of the actual authentication mechanism(s). [STANDARDS-TRACK]
Closed Domain Question Answering for Cultural Heritage

In this paper I present my research goals and what I have obtained so far into my first year of PhD. In particular this paper is about a novel architecture for closed domain question answering and a possible application in the cultural heritage context. Unlike open domain question answering, which makes intensive use of Information Retrieval (IR) techniques, closed domain question answering systems might be built on top of a formal model with the possibility to apply formal logics and reasoning. Natural language question answering poses some nontrivial problems to tackle. We investigate such problems and propose some solutions based on AI techniques, picking the Cultural Heritage domain as a target application.
Modified commercial UV curable elastomers for passive 4D printing

ABSTRACT Conventional 4D printing technologies are realized by combining 3D printing with soft active materials such as shape memory polymers (SMPs) and hydrogels. However, the intrinsic material property limitations make the SMP or hydrogel-based 4D printing unsuitable to fabricate the actuators that need to exhibit fast-response, reversible actuations. Instead, pneumatic actuations have been widely adopted by the soft robotics community to achieve fast-response, reversible actuations, and many efforts have been made to apply the pneumatic actuation to 3D printed structures to realize passive 4D printing with fast-response, reversible actuation. However, the 3D printing of soft actuators/robots heavily relies on the commercially available UV curable elastomers the break strains of which are not sufﬁcient for certain applications which require larger elastic deformation. In this paper, we present two simple approaches to tune the mechanical properties such as stretchability, stiffness, and durability of the commercially available UV curable elastomers by adding: (i) mono-acrylate based linear chain builder; (ii) urethane diacrylate-based crosslinker. Material property characterizations have been performed to investigate the effects of adding the two additives on the stretchability, stiffness, mechanical repeatability as well as viscosity. Demonstrations of fully printed robotic finger, grippers, and highly deformable 3D lattice structure are also presented. Graphical Abstract
High-pressure anaerobic digestion up to 100 bar: influence of initial pressure on production kinetics and specific methane yields

ABSTRACT To ensure an efficient use of biogas produced by anaerobic digestion, in some cases it would be advisable to upgrade the biogenic gases and inject them into the transnational gas grids. To investigate biogas production under high-pressure conditions up to 100 bar, new pressure batch methane reactors were developed for preliminary lab-scale experiments with a mixture of grass and maize silage hydrolysate. During this investigation, the effects of different initial pressures (1, 50 and 100 bar) on pressure increase, gas production and the specific methane yield using nitrogen as inert gas were determined. Based on the experimental findings increasing initial pressures alter neither significantly, further pressure increases nor pressure increase rates. All supplied organic acids were degraded and no measurable inhibition of the microorganisms was observed. The results show that methane reactors can be operated at operating pressures up to 100 bar without any negative effects on methane production.
Fairness for Transactional Events Technical Report

Transactional events are a recent concurrency abstraction that combines first-class synchronous message-passing events with allor-nothing transactions. Transactional events provide both a sequencing combinator, which permits the description of behaviors in which multiple potential synchronization actions (including communications between threads) either all occur in sequence or none of them occur, and a nondeterministic choice combinator, which permits the description of behaviors in which exactly one of a set of potential synchronization actions occurs. While prior work gave a semantics and an implementation for transactional events, it provided no guarantees about which of the many non-deterministic executions might be exhibited by a program. For concurrent systems, like transactional events, it is natural to expect certain fairness conditions to hold on executions. Intuitively, fairness guarantees that any system component that could (sufficiently often) make progress does, in fact, make progress. In this work, we investigate fairness for transactional events. We give a rigorous definition of fair program executions in transactional events, describe a refined operational semantics that guarantees fair executions, and discuss restrictions and assumptions necessary for the correctness of an implementation based on the refined semantics. This is a companion technical report, providing additional commentary and proof details, to a paper [1] appearing in Implementation and Application of Functional Languages: 23rd International Symposium (IFL’11).
The role of vitamin D and calcium in type 2 diabetes. A systematic review and meta-analysis.

CONTEXT Altered vitamin D and calcium homeostasis may play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (type 2 DM). EVIDENCE ACQUISITION AND ANALYSES: MEDLINE review was conducted through January 2007 for observational studies and clinical trials in adults with outcomes related to glucose homeostasis. When data were available to combine, meta-analyses were performed, and summary odds ratios (OR) are presented. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS Observational studies show a relatively consistent association between low vitamin D status, calcium or dairy intake, and prevalent type 2 DM or metabolic syndrome [OR (95% confidence interval): type 2 DM prevalence, 0.36 (0.16-0.80) among nonblacks for highest vs. lowest 25-hydroxyvitamin D; metabolic syndrome prevalence, 0.71 (0.57-0.89) for highest vs. lowest dairy intake]. There are also inverse associations with incident type 2 DM or metabolic syndrome [OR (95% confidence interval): type 2 DM incidence, 0.82 (0.72-0.93) for highest vs. lowest combined vitamin D and calcium intake; 0.86 (0.79-0.93) for highest vs. lowest dairy intake]. Evidence from trials with vitamin D and/or calcium supplementation suggests that combined vitamin D and calcium supplementation may have a role in the prevention of type 2 DM only in populations at high risk (i.e. glucose intolerance). The available evidence is limited because most observational studies are cross-sectional and did not adjust for important confounders, whereas intervention studies were short in duration, included few subjects, used a variety of formulations of vitamin D and calcium, or did post hoc analyses. CONCLUSIONS Vitamin D and calcium insufficiency may negatively influence glycemia, whereas combined supplementation with both nutrients may be beneficial in optimizing glucose metabolism.
Pulse transit time: an appraisal of potential clinical applications

Current techniques for investigating patients with suspected sleep disordered breathing are inadequate. Not only are many of the tests expensive, but they are also cumbersome and many centres require these investigations to be performed in the sleep laboratory. At the heart of the problem is the difficulty in identifying and quantifying the spectrum of respiratory events responsible for the sleep fragmentation and disabling excessive daytime sleepiness that is characteristic of obstructive sleep apnoea and its related conditions. Obstructive apnoeic episodes are not usually difficult to detect, even when only a basic measure of respiratory effort such as thoracic and abdominal movement is used. On the other hand, correctly identifying obstructive hypopnoeas and episodes of upper airway resistance needs a sensitive measure of airflow and inspiratory effort. The measurement of swings in pleural pressure by oesophageal manometry is the current gold standard technique for detecting changes in inspiratory effort. However, the placement of an oesophageal catheter is often uncomfortable and unacceptable, it may modify the upper airway dynamics,1 and some believe that it contributes to the sleep disturbance during the sleep study, though this is disputed.2 Furthermore, this technique is available in only a proportion of sleep laboratories and, if performed, adds significantly to the cost of the sleep study. These issues pose a clinical dilemma because it is important to detect and define hypopnoeas and upper airway resistance episodes as they are as relevant as apnoeas in producing sleep fragmentation. The assessment of sleep structure also creates problems. Not only is high quality electroencephalographic (EEG) monitoring difficult to achieve outside the laboratory, but the scoring is laborious in terms of technician time and is hence expensive. In addition, there remains uncertainty regarding the definition of an arousal.3 It is likely that “micro-arousals” which fall short of the …
Corn-based ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the Mississippi River

Corn cultivation in the United States is expected to increase to meet demand for ethanol. Nitrogen leaching from fertilized corn fields to the Mississippi–Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer. In this study, we combine agricultural land use scenarios with physically based models of terrestrial and aquatic nitrogen to examine the effect of present and future expansion of corn-based ethanol production on nitrogen export by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. The results show that the increase in corn cultivation required to meet the goal of 15–36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by the year 2022 suggested by a recent U.S. Senate energy policy would increase the annual average flux of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) export by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers by 10–34%. Generating 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol by the year 2022 will increase the odds that annual DIN export exceeds the target set for reducing hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico to >95%. Examination of extreme mitigation options shows that expanding corn-based ethanol production would make the already difficult challenges of reducing nitrogen export to the Gulf of Mexico and the extent of hypoxia practically impossible without large shifts in food production and agricultural management.
Ageing changes in human heart valves.

With the increasing number of necropsies on elderly patients, knowledge of ageing changes is becoming important for assessment of pathological findings. Few studies on these changes in human heart valves exist. Gross and Kugel (1931), describing the topographic anatomy and histology, briefly mention findings in the elderly, and more recently McMillan and Lev (1964) studied ageing in 200 human hearts. Their paper dealt mainly with early changes; 44 cases were under 1 year of age, none was over 85, and only 18 were over 70. The present communication is concerned with the changes at the other extreme of life, since is predominantly in elderly patients that difficulties in interpreting the appearances of heart valves are likely to arise.
Expert as a Service: Software Expert Recommendation via Knowledge Domain Embeddings in Stack Overflow

Question answering (Q&A) communities have gained momentum recently as an effective means of knowledge sharing over the crowds, where many users are experts in the real-world and can make quality contributions in certain domains or technologies. Although the massive user-generated Q&A data present a valuable source of human knowledge, a related challenging issue is how to find those expert users effectively. In this paper, we propose a framework for finding such experts in a collaborative network. Accredited with recent works on distributed word representations, we are able to summarize text chunks from the semantics perspective and infer knowledge domains by clustering pre-trained word vectors. In particular, we exploit a graph-based clustering method for knowledge domain extraction and discern the shared latent factors using matrix factorization techniques. The proposed clustering method features requiring no post-processing of clustering indicators and the matrix factorization method is combined with the semantic similarity of the historical answers to conduct expertise ranking of users given a query. We use Stack Overflow, a website with a large group of users and a large number of posts on topics related to computer programming, to evaluate the proposed approach and conduct extensively experiments to show the effectiveness of our approach.
Mississippi Communities for Healthy Living

Background. Improving the diet of communities experiencing health inequities can be challenging given that multiple dietary components are low in quality. Mississippi Communities for Healthy Living was designed to test the comparative effectiveness of nutrition education using a single- versus multiple-message approach to improve the diet of adult residents in the Lower Mississippi Delta. Method. The single-message approach targeted discretionary calories while the multiple-message approach also targeted vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and lean protein. Delta food frequency questionnaires were used to measure participants’ diet, while the Healthy Eating Index–2005 (HEI-2005) was used to generate diet quality scores. Generalized linear mixed model regression was used to test for significant time, treatment, and time × treatment interaction effects in HEI-2005 component and total score changes. Results. The majority of participants in the single- and multiple-message arms (n = 114 and 127, respectively) were female (88% and 96%, respectively), African American (90% and 98%, respectively), overweight or obese (92% and 87%, respectively), and 41 to 60 years of age (57% and 43%, respectively). Significant time effects were present for HEI-2005 total and component scores, with three exceptions—whole fruit, total grains, and saturated fat. Significant treatment effects were present for two components—total and whole fruit; scores were higher in the multiple-message approach arm as compared to the single-message approach arm across time points. No interaction effects were significant for any of the HEI-2005 scores. Conclusion. Focusing nutrition education on the discretionary calories component of the diet may be as effective as focusing on multiple components for improving diet quality.
High-Resolution Copy-Number Variation Map Reflects Human Olfactory Receptor Diversity and Evolution

Olfactory receptors (ORs), which are involved in odorant recognition, form the largest mammalian protein superfamily. The genomic content of OR genes is considerably reduced in humans, as reflected by the relatively small repertoire size and the high fraction (∼55%) of human pseudogenes. Since several recent low-resolution surveys suggested that OR genomic loci are frequently affected by copy-number variants (CNVs), we hypothesized that CNVs may play an important role in the evolution of the human olfactory repertoire. We used high-resolution oligonucleotide tiling microarrays to detect CNVs across 851 OR gene and pseudogene loci. Examining genomic DNA from 25 individuals with ancestry from three populations, we identified 93 OR gene loci and 151 pseudogene loci affected by CNVs, generating a mosaic of OR dosages across persons. Our data suggest that ∼50% of the CNVs involve more than one OR, with the largest CNV spanning 11 loci. In contrast to earlier reports, we observe that CNVs are more frequent among OR pseudogenes than among intact genes, presumably due to both selective constraints and CNV formation biases. Furthermore, our results show an enrichment of CNVs among ORs with a close human paralog or lacking a one-to-one ortholog in chimpanzee. Interestingly, among the latter we observed an enrichment in CNV losses over gains, a finding potentially related to the known diminution of the human OR repertoire. Quantitative PCR experiments performed for 122 sampled ORs agreed well with the microarray results and uncovered 23 additional CNVs. Importantly, these experiments allowed us to uncover nine common deletion alleles that affect 15 OR genes and five pseudogenes. Comparison to the chimpanzee reference genome revealed that all of the deletion alleles are human derived, therefore indicating a profound effect of human-specific deletions on the individual OR gene content. Furthermore, these deletion alleles may be used in future genetic association studies of olfactory inter-individual differences.
A 1.5-V 10-ppm//spl deg/C 2nd-order curvature-compensated CMOS bandgap reference with trimming

A 2nd-order curvature-compensated CMOS bandgap reference circuit with a novel trimming technique is described. The 2nd-order curvature compensation is implemented by using a temperature-dependent resistor ratio generated by a poly resistor and a diffusion resistor. A trimming technique with digital switches is utilized to increase or decrease resistance bi-directionally and therefore to minimize the variance of resistance. The proposed voltage reference operates down to a 1.5 V supply and consumes a maximum supply current of 55 muA. The experimental prototype circuit in a standard 0.35-mum CMOS process achieves a temperature coefficient of 10 ppm/degC and occupies an area of 0.71 mm2
Haptic Learning of Semaphoric Finger Gestures

Haptic learning of gesture shortcuts has never been explored. In this paper, we investigate haptic learning of a freehand semaphoric finger tap gesture shortcut set using haptic rings. We conduct a two-day study of 30 participants where we couple haptic stimuli with visual and audio stimuli, and compare their learning performance with wholly visual learning. The results indicate that with <30 minutes of learning, haptic learning of finger tap semaphoric gestures is comparable to visual learning and maintains its recall on the second day.
Three-dimensional architecture of collagen type VI in the human trabecular meshwork

Purpose Type VI collagen is a primary component of the extracellular matrix of many connective tissues. It can form distinct aggregates depending on tissue structure, chemical environment, and physiology. In the current study we examine the ultrastructure and mode of aggregation of type VI collagen molecules in the human trabecular meshwork. Methods Trabecular meshwork was dissected from donor human eyes, and three-dimensional transmission electron microscopy of type VI collagen aggregates was performed. Results Electron-dense collagen structures were detected in the human trabecular meshwork and identified as collagen type VI assemblies based on the three-dimensional spatial arrangement of the type VI collagen molecules, the 105-nm axial periodicity of the assemblies themselves, and their characteristic double bands, which arose from the globular domains of the type VI collagen molecules. Sulfated proteoglycans were also seen to associate with the assemblies either with the globular domain or the inner rod-like segments of the tetramers. Conclusions No extended structural regularity in the organization of type VI collagen assemblies within the trabecular meshwork was evident, and the lateral separation of the tetramers forming the assemblies varied, as did the angle formed by the main axes of adjacent tetramers. This is potentially reflective of the specific nature of the trabecular meshwork environment, which facilitates aqueous outflow from the eye, and we speculate that extracellular matrix ions and proteins might prevent a more tight packing of type VI collagen tetramers that form the assemblies.
Characterization of DNA structures by laser Raman spectroscopy

Oriented fibers drawn from aqueous gels of calf‐thymus DNA were maintained at constant relative humidites of 75 and 92% to yield canonical A‐DNA and B‐DNA structures, respectively. Raman spectra of the two forms of DNA were recorded over the spectral range 300–4000 cm−1. The authenticated DNA fibers were deuterated in hygrostatic cells containing D2O at appropriate relative humidities, and the corresponding spectra of deuterated DNAs were also obtained. The spectra reveal all of the Raman scattering frequencies and intensities characteristic of A‐ and B‐DNA structures in both nondeuterated and deuterated froms, as well as the frequencies and intensities of adsorbed solvent molecules from which the hydration content of DNA fibers can be calculated. Numerous conformation‐sensitive vibrational modes of DNA bases and phosphate groups have been identified throughout the 300–1700‐cm−1 interval. Evidence has also been obtained for conformation sensitivity of deoxyribosyl CH stretching modes in the 2800–3000‐cm−1 region. Raman lines of both the backbone and the bases are proposed as convenient indicators of A‐ and B‐DNA structures. The results are extended to Z‐DNA models investigated previously. Some implications of these findings for the determination of DNA or RNA structure from Raman spectra of nucleoproteins and viruses are considered.
Virus interference. II. Some properties of interferon

Interferon could be titrated by the amount of interference induced in fragments of chorio-allantoic membranes challenged with influenza A virus. Over a ten-fold range, inverse proportion between interferon concentration and haemagglutinin titre reached by the challenge virus was observed. Interferon proved stable at 2°C for 2 weeks. Marked inactivation took place after 1 h at 60°C. Interferon was not measurably sedimented by 100 000 g for ½ h. It was held back by gradocol filters of a. p. d. 0.6 μ. It was not dialyzable. Interferon was active against influenza A, Sendai, Newcastle disease and vaccinia viruses. It was not neutralized by anti-MEL rabbit serum and only slightly inhibited by pooled human serum rich in complement-fixing antibody to influenza A soluble antigen.