Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Virtues of Moderation

TL;DR — On a Friday in 2005, the Los Angeles Times launched an experiment: a “wikitorial” on the Iraq War that any of the paper’s readers could edit. By Sunday, the experiment had ended in abject failure: vandals overran it with crude profanity and graphic pornography. The wikitorial took its inspiration and its technology from Wikipedia, but missed something essential about how the “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” staves off abuse while maintaining its core commitment to open participation.The difference is moderation: the governance mechanisms that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse. Town meetings have moderators, and so do online communities. A community’s moderators can promote posts or hide them, honor posters or shame them, recruit users or ban them. Their decisions influence what is seen, what is valued, what is said. They create the conditions under which cooperation is possible.This Article provides a novel taxonomy of moderation in online communities. It breaks down the basic verbs of moderation — exclusion, pricing, organizing, and norm-setting — and shows how they help communities walk the tightrope between the chaos of too much freedom and the sterility of too much control. Scholars studying the commons can learn from moderation, and so can policy-makers debating the regulation of online communities.
Depressive symptoms and inflammatory biomarkers in patients with heart failure

Background: Inflammation may be a link between depressive symptoms and outcomes in patients with heart failure. It is not clear whether inflammatory markers are independently related to depressive symptoms in this population. Aim: To determine which inflammatory biomarkers are independently associated with depressive symptoms in heart failure. Methods and results: We analyzed data from 428 outpatients enrolled in a heart failure registry (32% female, 61 ± 12 years, 48% New York Heart Association Class III/IV). Depressive symptoms were measured with the Beck Depression Inventory-II. Serum C-reactive protein (CRP), cytokines (interleukin 1 receptor antagonist, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10), tumor necrosis alpha, and soluble receptors sTNFR1 and sTNFR2 were measured with enzyme immunoassay. Multiple regressions were used to determine which biomarkers were associated with depressive symptoms controlling for demographics, heart failure severity, and clinical variables. Twenty-seven percent (n = 119) had depressive symptoms. CRP was related to depressive symptoms after controlling for age and gender, but no inflammatory biomarkers were associated with depressive symptoms after controlling for all variables in the model. Conclusions: There was no relationship between inflammatory biomarkers and depressive symptoms. Our findings, in combination with prior researchers’, suggest there is not a robust relationship between depressive symptoms and individual biomarkers of inflammation in heart failure.
Indexing Cognitive Load using Blood Volume Pulse Features

Physiological responses contain rich affective information even when humans are not expressing any external signs. In this paper, we investigate the use of the Blood Volume Pulse (BVP) signals for indexing cognitive load. An experiment, which introduced cognitive load as a secondary task in a decision making context was conducted in the study. BVP signals were analyzed in order to establish relationships between BVP and cognitive load levels. A set of features (e.g. peak and max features) was found to be significantly distinctive across different cognitive load levels. The identified BVP features can be used to set up machine learning models for the automatic classification of CL levels in intelligent systems.
Civic engagement in higher education : concepts and practices

Foreword by Thomas Ehrlich. Preface. Acknowledgments. The Authors. Introduction. 1. Civic Engagement in Today's Higher Education: An Overview (Barbara Jacoby). 2. What We Know about Civic Engagement among College Students (Mark Hugo Lopez and Abby Kiesa). 3. Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility: The Civic Learning Spiral (Caryn McTighe Musil). 4. Civic Engagement in the First College Year (Mary Stuart Hunter and Blaire L. Moody). 5. Engaging General Education (Kim Spiezio). 6. The Influence of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Learning on Civic Engagement (Nance Lucas). 7. Capstone Experiences (Kevin Kecskes and Seanna Kerrigan). 8. Enhancing Intercultural Competence through Civic Engagement (Michelle R. Dunlap and Nicole Webster). 9. Leadership Education and the Revitalization of Public Life (Nicholas V. Longo and Marguerite S. Shaffer). 10. Moving from Service-Learning to Civic Engagement (Marshall Welch). 11. Community-Based Undergraduate Research: Collaborative Inquiry for the Public Good (Elizabeth L. Paul). 12. Global Civic Engagement (Barbara Jacoby and Nevin C. Brown). 13. Securing the Future of Civic Engagement in Higher Education (Barbara Jacoby and Elizabeth Hollander). Index.
Dependent failures in highly reliable static networks

Static network reliability models typically assume that the failures of their components are independent. This assumption allows for the design of efficient Monte Carlo algorithms that can estimate the network reliability in settings where it is a rare-event probability. Despite this computational benefit, independent component failures is frequently not a realistic modeling assumption for real-life networks. In this article we show how the splitting methods for rare-event simulation can be used to estimate the reliability of a network model that incorporates a realistic dependence structure via the Marshal-Olkin copula.
Location of Shfr, a new gene that rescues hybrid female viability in crosses between Drosophila simulans females and D. melanogaster males

As a rule, progeny of crosses between Drosophila simulans females and D. melanogaster males are formed by sterile males, because females die as embryos. However, populations of these species have been found that produce a certain frequency of viable hybrid females. We have found that 94% of the females of a D. simulans population from Tel Aviv gave hybrid progenies with both sexes. The segregation of phenotypes with different rescue success adjusts to the action of a single, dominant, zygotic-acting gene involved in hybrid female viability. This gene, which we named ‘Simulans hybrid females rescue’ (Shfr), is temperature-sensitive, showing a much smaller effect as temperature increases. Reciprocal crosses between Tel Aviv and a nonrescue population indicate some influence of cytoplasm or maternal effect in rescue. Using a chromosome substitution analysis we have located Shfr on the second chromosome. Using synthetic lines with this chromosome having different segments from Tel Aviv and from a multimarker strain we have mapped Shfr between black (2 L-43.0) and pearly (2 R-74.0).
AllJoyn Lambda: An architecture for the management of smart environments in IoT

The increasing number of everyday embedded devices that are interconnected over the Internet leads to the need of new software solutions for managing them in an efficient, scalable, and smart way. In addition, such devices produce a huge amount of information, causing the well known Big Data problem, that need to be stored and processed. This emerging scenario, known as Internet of Things (IoT), raises two main challenges: large-scale smart environments management and Big Data storage/analytics. In this paper, we address both challenges, proposing AllJoyn Lambda, a software solution integrating AllJoyn in the Lambda architecture used for Big Data storage and analytics. In order, to describe how the architecture works, a software prototype integrating the AllJoyn system with MongoDB and Storm is presented and tested, analyzing a “smart home” case of study. Finally, we will focus on how can be possible to manage embedded devices in a smart fashion processing both batch and real-time data.
Columbia NLP: Sentiment Slot Filling

In this report, we present a system which, given a named entity and the polarity (positive or negative) of an opinion expressed either by or towards it, finds all entities that could reasonably be the targets or holders, respectively, of that sentiment. The system operates in three steps: extracting viable entity pairs, analyzing the subjectivity of the text relating them, and classifying the polarity of the sentiment expressed.
A study of CSRR loaded microstrip antenna for multiband applications

This paper investigates the study of single and multiple complementary strip ring resonator (CSRR) loaded microstrip patch antennas (MPA's). Three different designs with CSRR loaded MPA's are examined and compared the obtain results with without CSRR patch. The miniaturization of MPA and multi band frequency resonance was observed with the increasing number of CSRR's on patches of the designs. The design-1 is resonant at frequency 5.5GHz, the design-2 is resonant at frequency 5.27GHz, the design-3 is resonant at two frequencies 5.16 & 7.12GHz and the design-4 is resonant at four frequencies 4.65, 5.04, 5.84 & 7.85GHz respectively. The surface current distributions and radiation patterns of four designs are studied.
Modeling Association Among Multivariate Exposures In Case-Control Studies

The paper considers the problem of modeling association among multiple exposures in a matched case-control study where some of the exposures may be partially missing. The exposure variables could all be categorical or continuous or could be a mixed set of some categorical and some continuous variables. Association models using completely observed covariates are proposed for each of the three scenarios. The models account for varying stratum heterogeneity in different matched sets. Three real data examples accompany the proposed models. The examples as well as a small scale simulation study indicate that in presence of missingness and association, modeling the association between the exposures rather than ignoring it, leads to better estimates of the relative risk parameters with smaller standard errors. Estimation of the model parameters is carried out in a Bayesian framework and the estimates are compared with classical conditional logistic regression estimates.
Prevention of preterm birth: a randomized trial of vaginal compared with intramuscular progesterone

Objective. To assess efficacy and tolerability of vaginal compared with intramuscular progesterone in reducing the rate of recurrent preterm birth before 34 weeks of gestation. Design. Prospective randomized study. Setting. Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Armed Forces Hospital Southern Region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Sample. Five‐hundred and eighteen women with a prior history of preterm birth. Methods. Women were randomized to receive either 90 mg of vaginal progesterone gel once daily or 250 mg of intramuscular progesterone weekly. Treatment began between 14 and 18 weeks of gestation and continued until 36 complete weeks of gestation, delivery or the occurrence of premature rupture of membranes. Main outcome measures. The primary outcome measure was delivery before 34 weeks of gestation. The secondary outcome measures were PTB between 34 and 37 weeks of gestation and neonatal outcomes including birthweight, neonatal death, and the need for admission to the neonatal intensive care unit. Results. The baseline characteristics of the study participants were similar. Two‐hundred and thirty‐eight (94.1%) patients in the vaginal group and 226 (90.8%) patients in the intramuscular group were compliant with their medications. Vaginal progesterone was associated with a lower percentage of deliveries before 34 weeks of gestation than the intramuscular preparation (p= 0.02). This association was also observed at 28 and 32 weeks of gestation (p= 0.04). Adverse effects were reported in 14.1% of patients in the intramuscular group, but in only 7.5% of patients in the vaginal group (p= 0.017). Conclusions. Vaginal progesterone was more effective than intramuscular progesterone for the prevention of preterm birth and had fewer adverse effects.
HMTT: A hybrid hardware/software tracing system for bridging the DRAM access trace's semantic gap

DRAM access traces (i.e., off-chip memory references) can be extremely valuable for the design of memory subsystems and performance tuning of software. Hardware snooping on the off-chip memory interface is an effective and nonintrusive approach to monitoring and collecting real-life DRAM accesses. However, compared with software-based approaches, hardware snooping approaches typically lack semantic information, such as process/function/object identifiers, virtual addresses, and lock contexts, that is essential to the complete understanding of the systems and software under investigation. In this article, we propose a hybrid hardware/software mechanism that is able to collect off-chip memory reference traces with semantic information. We have designed and implemented a prototype system called HMTT (Hybrid Memory Trace Tool), which uses a custom-made DIMM connector to collect off-chip memory references and a high-level event-encoding scheme to correlate semantic information with memory references. In addition to providing complete, undistorted DRAM access traces, the proposed system is also able to perform various types of low-overhead profiling, such as object-relative accesses and multithread lock accesses.
Lycopene attenuates LPS-induced TNF-α secretion in macrophages and inflammatory markers in adipocytes exposed to macrophage-conditioned media.

SCOPE Adipose tissue is infiltrated by an increasing number of macrophages during the development of obesity. These immune cells are suspected to be a major source of TNF-α that interferes with adipocyte function. Because lycopene possesses anti-inflammatory properties, we hypothesize that lycopene could reduce the production of TNF-α by macrophages and thus interfere in the cross-talk between macrophages and adipocytes. METHODS AND RESULTS We demonstrated that physiological concentrations of lycopene were able to attenuate the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-mediated induction of TNF-α in RAW 264.7 macrophages, at both the mRNA and protein levels. The molecular mechanism was studied. It appeared that the LPS-activation of both JNK and NF-κB signaling pathways was modulated by lycopene. The anti-inflammatory effects of lycopene on macrophages were accompanied by a decrease in LPS-stimulated macrophage migration in the presence of lycopene. Furthermore, lycopene decreased macrophage conditioned medium-induced proinflammatory cytokine, acute phase protein, and chemokine mRNA expression in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. CONCLUSION These data indicate that lycopene displayed an anti-inflammatory effect on macrophages that beneficially impacted adipocyte function. Thus, these results suggest that lycopene could block the vicious cycle that occurs between adipocytes and macrophages in adipose tissue during obesity.
Scale Adaptive Filters

Image features vary in size and thus feature analysis often requires a multi-scale approach. Typically, this is achieved using a bank of filters centred at discrete scales. We introduce a novel filter bank constructed from Fourier series basis functions in the logarithmic frequency domain. The filter bank responses can be used to obtain a continuous approximation of the response to another filter shifted through scale. Using the Riesz transform of the filter bank, we can create a vector-valued monogenic signal scale response. The amplitude of this response is a phase- invariant distribution of the local energy of the image across scale, from which statistics such as mean scale and variance can be calculated. We demonstrate the usefulness of the filter bank by using principal component analysis to design filters, using k-means clustering to classify pixels by scale response and local structure, and creating novel continuous methods of blob detection and phase congruency.
THE SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SMS TEXT MESSAGING

The increasingly widespread use of text -messaging has led to the questioning of the social and psychological effects of this novel communication medium. A selection of findings from an online questionnaire that was developed by the author to answer this pertinent question are presented. McKenna’s recent work on the way the Internet can help some people develop relationships is drawn upon and taken a step further by exploring the differences between those who prefer texting (‘Texters’) and those who prefer talking on their mobiles (‘Talkers’). A large sample of 982 respondents completed the questionnaire. Results showed there was a clear distinction between Texters and Talkers in the way they used their mobiles and their underlying motivations. The key finding to emerge in the preliminary analyses was that Texters seemed to form close knit ‘text circles’ with their own social ecology, interconnecting with a close group of friends in perpetual text contact. Compared to Talkers, Texters were found to be more lonely and socially anxious, and more likely to disclose their ‘real-self’ through text than via face- to face or voice call exchanges. Structural equation modeling produced a model showing that where respondents located their real-self and whether they were a Texter or a Talker mediated between the loneliness and social anxiety measures and the impact of these on relational outcomes, in line with McKenna’s theoretical framework. Thus it appears that there is something special about texting that allows some people to translate their loneliness and/or social anxiety into productive relationships whilst for others the mobile does not afford the same effect. Applications and explorations for future research are discussed.
Reduction in hemoglobin A1C with real-time continuous glucose monitoring: results from a 12-week observational study.

BACKGROUND Real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) was studied in 140 adults with diabetes over a 12-week period of home use. Hemoglobin A(1c)(HbA1c) was measured on day 1 (baseline) and at weeks 6 and 12. METHODS On day 1, participants received the CGM device (STS(R) System, DexCom, Inc., San Diego, CA) and underwent training on proper use. Insertion of the first sensor was performed under staff supervision. Subjects inserted subsequent sensors on their own. After calibration, the device (a 3-day sensor, receiver, and transmitter) provided users with real-time glucose values updated at 5-min intervals, glucose trend graphs, configurable high/low alerts, and a hypoglycemia alarm (<or=55 mg/dL). Study participants were given supplies sufficient for 3 weeks of device use. Follow-up visits were performed at 3-week intervals for resupply and to download CGM data, with a final visit at the end of week 12. RESULTS Overall, a reduction in HbA1c of 0.4 +/- 0.05% (least squares mean +/- SE) was observed, P < 0.0001. Significant HbA1c reductions were observed across subgroups of subjects with both type 1 and 2 diabetes, and those delivering insulin by multiple daily injections and pumps. The largest HbA1c reduction (1.4 +/- 0.4%) was observed in subjects with baseline HbA1c >9.0%. Increased CGM use was associated with greater reductions in HbA1c. CONCLUSIONS This observational study showed that home use of real-time GCM was safe and well tolerated and associated with a clinically and statistically significant reduction in HbA1c. Large-scale randomized, controlled outcome studies of CGM are indicated.
Genetic alterations in mouse lung tumors: Implications for cancer chemoprevention

Specific genetic alterations affecting known tumor suppressor genes and proto‐oncogenes occur during mouse lung tumorigenesis. These include mutational activation of the K‐ras gene, commonly seen at a frequency of about 80% in both spontaneously occurring and chemically induced adenomas and adenocarcinomas of the lung, suggesting that it is an early event that persists into malignancy. Allelic loss of the p16 tumor suppressor gene also is a frequent event, occurring in about 50% of mouse lung adenocarcinomas, but rarely in lung adenomas, suggesting that it may play a role in malignant conversion or progression of lung tumors. Other genetic alterations detected in mouse lung tumors include reduced expression of Rb and p16, and increased c‐myc expression. Alterations of these genes are also common in the genesis of human lung cancer. Genetic linkage analysis to identify human lung cancer susceptibility genes is difficult due to the genetic heterogeneity and exposure to environmental risk factors. The mouse lung tumor model has become a valuable alternative for identifying such genes. Recently, loci responsible for mouse lung tumor susceptibility have been mapped to chromosomes 6, 9, 17, and 19, while those linked to lung tumor resistance have been mapped to chromosomes 4, 11, 12, and 18. Known candidate susceptibility or resistance genes include the K‐ras proto‐oncogene on chromosome 6, and the p16 tumor supressor gene on chromosome 4. With evidence of considerable overlap between the genetic alterations that underlie human and mouse lung tumorigenesis, the mouse lung tumor model has been expanded to include pre‐clinical screening of chemopreventive agents against human lung cancer. Studies on the modulation of genetic defects in mouse lung tumors by known and potential chemopreventive agents should further the goal of developing an effective prevention and treatment of lung cancer. J. Cell. Biochem. Suppls. 28/29:49–63. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Familial hematuria due to type IV collagen mutations: Alport syndrome and thin basement membrane nephropathy

Purpose of review Recent molecular genetic studies have shown that mutations in type IV collagen account for a significant proportion of patients with persistent glomerular hematuria. This review will discuss the implications of these findings for the diagnosis and management of persistent glomerular hematuria. Recent findings Type IV collagen mutations are associated with a continuum of disease severity. Heterozygous mutations typically cause isolated, nonprogressive hematuria. Mutations in both alleles of the autosomal type IV collagen genes, or hemizygous mutations in the X-linked gene encoding the α5 chain of type IV collagen, result in progressive renal disease that is often associated with sensorineural deafness (Alport syndrome). Animal models of Alport syndrome have begun to provide insights into the pathogenesis of end-stage renal disease in Alport syndrome, with potentially important implications for therapy. Summary Recognition that glomerular hematuria frequently has a genetic basis is important for accurate genetic counseling, early identification of individuals at risk for end-stage renal disease development, and institution of therapies to delay the onset of ESRD.