Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Systematic Examination of Member Turnover and Online Community Health

A key characteristic of online communities is the fast turnover of their membership. Because online communities rely on voluntary member contribution to survive and succeed, member turnover can have important implications on the resource availability and the health of a community. However, empirical research on the effects of member turnover in online communities is rare. Most research assumes that slower turnover and higher retention are positively associated with community outcomes, without directly testing that assumption. A few studies have challenged this view and suggested that turnover can be beneficial in certain conditions. In this study, we contribute to the understanding of member turnover in online communities by systematically examining the relationship between member turnover and multiple dimensions of community health. The results will offer practical implications to online community managers on whether and when to retain member in their communities.
Extracting corresponding-point on textureless object surface based on texture synthesis

Since the feature points which can be detected by the state-of-the-art intensity based point-detectors are always gather at the range with significant intensity change, such as textured portions or edges of an image, there is nearly no points in the areas of weak texture can be detected by traditional detectors. In this paper we describe a new technique for Interest points detecting and matching from weak texture stereo pairs. The detection and matching mechanism can be separated into three steps: firstly, the information on the large textureless areas well be enhance by adding textures through texture synthesis algorithm and affine transform; secondly, detecting the initial interest-point set by classical interest-point detectors; finally, graph cuts are used to find the globally optimal set of matching points on stereo pairs.
Traffic descriptors for VBR video teleconferencing over ATM networks

This paper examines the problem of video transport over ATM networks using knowledge of both video system design and broadband networks. The following issues are addressed: video system delay caused by internal buffering, traffic descriptors (TD) for video, and call admission. We find that while different video sequences require different TD parameters, the following trends hold for all sequences examined. First, increasing the delay in the video system decreases the necessary peak rate and significantly increases the number of calls that can be carried by the network. Second, as an operational traffic descriptor for video, the leaky-bucket algorithm appears to be superior to the sliding-window algorithm. And finally, with a delay in the video system, the statistical multiplexing gain from VBR over CBR video is upper bounded by roughly a factor of four, and to obtain a gain of about 2.0 can require the operational traffic descriptor to have a window or bucket size on the order of a thousand cells. We briefly discuss how increasing the complexity of the video system may enable the size of the bucket or window to be reduced. >
Feathered Non-Avian Dinosaurs from North America Provide Insight into Wing Origins

Fancy Feathers In the past few decades, an increasing number of dinosaurs have been shown to have possessed feathers. While it seems likely that feathers themselves may have evolved for thermoregulation, the original function of wings has been less clear and remained a matter of debate. Based on examination of three Theropod specimens from the genus Ornothomimus, Zelenitsky et al. (p. 510) conclude that the feathered wing may have evolved not for locomotion or prey capture (the animals were herbivores), but rather as a courtship display. All of the individuals examined had a covering consisting of short filamentous feathers, but the adult specimens, which would have reached sexual maturity, also had long shafted feathers on their forelimbs. Analysis of feathered theropod fossils from North America suggests that feathers may have first evolved for display. Previously described feathered dinosaurs reveal a fascinating record of feather evolution, although substantial phylogenetic gaps remain. Here we report the occurrence of feathers in ornithomimosaurs, a clade of non-maniraptoran theropods for which fossilized feathers were previously unknown. The Ornithomimus specimens, recovered from Upper Cretaceous deposits of Alberta, Canada, provide new insights into dinosaur plumage and the origin of the avian wing. Individuals from different growth stages reveal the presence of a filamentous feather covering throughout life and winglike structures on the forelimbs of adults. The appearance of winglike structures in older animals indicates that they may have evolved in association with reproductive behaviors. These specimens show that primordial wings originated earlier than previously thought, among non-maniraptoran theropods.
Pushing the detection limit of thin film magnetoelectric heterostructures

Composite magnetoelectrics implemented as thin film heterostructures are discussed in view of their applicability as highly sensitive magnetic field sensors. Here, either PZT or AlN served as piezoelectric component. The magnetostrictive phase consisted of layer systems based on FeCo or (Fe_90Co_10)_78Si_12B_10. All functional layers were deposited with thicknesses of a few micrometers on Si cantilever structures with typical lateral dimensions of 25 mm by 2.2 mm. Magnetoelectric coefficients as large as 6900 V/cm Oe and a limit of detection as low as 1 pT/(Hz)^1/2 were measured. Currently, the best result demonstrates a detection limit of 500 fT/(Hz)^1/2 at 958 Hz frequency using a set of two sensors for external noise suppression. A frequency conversion technique is proposed to broaden the applicability of resonant magnetoelectric sensors to a wider frequency range. Finally, the achieved sensor performance is evaluated with regard to typical magnetic field amplitudes in medical applications.
Comparative analysis of pharmacovigilance methods in the detection of adverse drug reactions using electronic medical records

OBJECTIVE Medication safety requires that each drug be monitored throughout its market life as early detection of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) can lead to alerts that prevent patient harm. Recently, electronic medical records (EMRs) have emerged as a valuable resource for pharmacovigilance. This study examines the use of retrospective medication orders and inpatient laboratory results documented in the EMR to identify ADRs. METHODS Using 12 years of EMR data from Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), we designed a study to correlate abnormal laboratory results with specific drug administrations by comparing the outcomes of a drug-exposed group and a matched unexposed group. We assessed the relative merits of six pharmacovigilance measures used in spontaneous reporting systems (SRSs): proportional reporting ratio (PRR), reporting OR (ROR), Yule's Q (YULE), the χ(2) test (CHI), Bayesian confidence propagation neural networks (BCPNN), and a gamma Poisson shrinker (GPS). RESULTS We systematically evaluated the methods on two independently constructed reference standard datasets of drug-event pairs. The dataset of Yoon et al contained 470 drug-event pairs (10 drugs and 47 laboratory abnormalities). Using VUMC's EMR, we created another dataset of 378 drug-event pairs (nine drugs and 42 laboratory abnormalities). Evaluation on our reference standard showed that CHI, ROR, PRR, and YULE all had the same F score (62%). When the reference standard of Yoon et al was used, ROR had the best F score of 68%, with 77% precision and 61% recall. CONCLUSIONS Results suggest that EMR-derived laboratory measurements and medication orders can help to validate previously reported ADRs, and detect new ADRs.
Technical opinionSteering self-learning distance algorithms

The concepT of disTance expresses The disTorTion measure between any pair of entities lying in a common space. Distances are at the very heart of geometry, and are ubiquitous in science, needless to say in computational science. From the vantage point of physics, distances may be interpreted as the smallest amount of energy required to go from one location to the other, or to morph from one state to the other. Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion in popular press about what is exactly meant by using the wording " distance. " For example, people quite often interchange " distance " with " metric " without caring much about the implicitly underlying mathematical properties: In this case, to know whether the triangle inequality axiom is satisfied or not. A great deal of efforts was achieved by Deza and Deza 6 in 2006 by publishing the first dictionary of distances presenting succinctly but unambiguously the various properties of distortion measures (such as, metrics, semi-metrics, distances, quasi-distances, divergences, etc.), and listing an extensive although non-exhaustive catalog of principal distances with their domain of applications encountered in both natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, and cos-mology), and computer sciences (coding theory, data mining, and audio/ video processing). Algorithm designers and researchers in computational sciences daily face the daunting task of choosing the most appropriate distance functions for solving their specific problems at hand. It is clearly understood nowadays that the usual flatland Euclidean distance is rarely appropriate for solving tasks on high-dimensional heterogeneous datasets that are rather lying on curved manifolds. A simple toy argument is to consider the task of averaging rotation matrices. Rotation matrices are ortho-normal matrices of unit determinant. Unfortunately, the center of mass of a set of matrices, for example, the cen-troid defined as the arithmetic mean of rotation matrices is not a rotation matrix so that a regularization method is required to cast the average matrix to the closest rotation matrix. Consider yet another example: partial 3D shape retrieval. In partial shape retrieval, a user queries a database of 3D objects with a given part. Solving this problem requires to consider an oriented distance to break the symmetry rule. That is, one would like the distance part to object to be greater than the distance object to part, for all parts belonging to the given object. Indeed, to clarify this point, consider the distance of a 3D wagon …
Smoking and cardiac events after venous coronary bypass surgery. A 15-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND The long-term clinical effects of smoking and smoking cessation after venous coronary bypass surgery have not been well established. METHODS AND RESULTS Four hundred fifteen patients who underwent venous coronary bypass surgery between April 1976 and April 1977 were followed up prospectively for 15 years. Multivariate Cox survival analysis revealed that patients who smoked at the time of surgery had no elevated risks for clinical events compared with nonsmokers. However, smoking behavior at 1 and 5 years after surgery appeared to be an important predictor of clinical events during the subsequent follow-up period. Compared with patients who stopped smoking since surgery, smokers at 1 year after surgery had more than twice the risk for myocardial infarction and reoperation. Patients who were still smoking at 5 years after surgery had even more elevated risks for myocardial infarction and reoperation and a significantly increased risk for angina pectoris compared with patients who stopped smoking since surgery and patients who never smoked. Patients who started to smoke again within 5 years after surgery had increased risks for reoperation and angina pectoris. No differences in outcome were found between patients who stopped smoking since surgery and nonsmokers. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that smoking cessation after coronary bypass surgery may have important beneficial effects on clinical events during long-term follow-up.
The 3′ End of Norwalk Virus mRNA Contains Determinants That Regulate the Expression and Stability of the Viral Capsid Protein VP1: a Novel Function for the VP2 Protein

ABSTRACT Norwalk virus (NV) is the prototype strain of a group of noncultivable human caliciviruses responsible for epidemic outbreaks of acute gastroenteritis. The capsid protein VP1 is synthesized from a subgenomic RNA that contains two open reading frames (ORFs), ORF2 and ORF3, and the 3′ untranslated region (UTR). ORF2 and ORF3 code for the capsid protein (VP1) and a small structural basic protein (VP2), respectively. We discovered that the yields of virus-like particles (VLPs) composed of VP1 are significantly reduced when this protein is expressed from ORF2 alone. To determine how the 3′ terminus of the NV subgenomic RNA regulates VP1 expression, we compared VP1 expression levels by using recombinant baculovirus constructs containing different 3′ elements. High VP1 levels were detected by using a recombinant baculovirus that contained ORF2, ORF3, and the 3′UTR (ORF2+3+3′UTR). In contrast, expression of VP1 from constructs that lacked the 3′UTR (ORF2+3), ORF3 (ORF2+3′UTR), or both (ORF2 alone) was highly reduced. Elimination of VP2 synthesis from the subgenomic RNA by mutation resulted in VP1 levels similar to those obtained with the ORF2 construct alone, suggesting a cis role for VP2 in upregulation of VP1 expression levels. Comparisons of the kinetics of RNA and capsid protein expression levels by using constructs with or without ORF3 or the 3′UTR revealed that the 3′UTR increased the levels of VP1 RNA, whereas the presence of VP2 resulted in increased levels of VP1. Furthermore, VP2 increased VP1 stability and protected VP1 from disassembly and protease degradation. The increase in VP1 expression levels caused by the presence of VP2 in cis was also observed in mammalian cells.
Iodine and thyroid hormones during pregnancy and postpartum

Iodine is a trace element essential for synthesis of the thyroid hormones, triiodothyronine and thyroxine. These hormones play a vital role in the early growth and development stages of most organs, especially the brain. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that, after famine, iodine deficiency is the most avoidable cause of cerebral lesions including different degrees of mental retardation and cerebral paralysis. The main function of iodine in vertebrates is to interact with the thyroid hormones. During pregnancy sufficient quantities of iodine are required to prevent the appearance of hypothyroidism, trophoblastic and embryonic or fetal disorders, neonatal and maternal hypothyroidism, and permanent sequelae in infants. Thyroid hormone receptors and iodothyronine deiodinases are present in placenta and central nervous tissue of the fetus. A number of environmental factors influence the epidemiology of thyroid disorders, and even relatively small abnormalities and differences in the level of iodine intake in a population have profound effects on the occurrence of thyroid abnormalities. The prevalence of disorders related to iodine deficit during pregnancy and postpartum has increased. Iodine supplementation is an effective measure in the case of pregnant and lactating women. However, it is not implemented and the problem is still present even in societies with theoretically advanced health systems. During pregnancy and postpartum, the WHO recommends iodine intake be increased to at least 200 μg/day. Side-effects provoked by iodine supplementation are rare during pregnancy at the recommended doses.
Label diffusion on graph for face identification

We present a generic classification method based on a label diffusion on graph. Inspired by the watershed transform widely used in the image segmentation field, we propose a simple algorithm working on distances graphs of any topology. Applied to the faces identification problem, this method can deal with any type of distances. We propose also two penalty functions that clearly improve the identification results when used within the diffusion process.
Molecular Cloning and Expression of the Gene for Elastin-binding Protein (ebpS) in Staphylococcus aureus*

Interactions between staphylococci and components of the extracellular matrix mediate attachment of the bacteria to host tissues and organs and define an important mechanism leading to colonization, invasion, and formation of metastatic abscesses. We have previously demonstrated a specific binding interaction between Staphylococcus aureus and elastin, one of the major protein components of the extracellular matrix. Available evidence suggests that this association is mediated by a 25-kDa elastin-binding protein on the surface of S. aureus (EbpS). To study the molecular structure and function of EbpS, the gene encoding EbpS was cloned, sequenced, and expressed in Escherichia coli. DNA sequence data indicate that the ebpS open reading frame consists of 606 base pairs and encodes a novel polypeptide with a predicted molecular mass of 23,345 daltons and pI of 4.9. A polyclonal antibody raised against recombinant EbpS interacted with the native 25-kDa cell surface EbpS and inhibited staphylococcal elastin binding. Furthermore, recombinant EbpS bound specifically to immobilized elastin and inhibited binding of S. aureus to elastin. A degradation product of recombinant EbpS lacking the first 59 amino acids of the molecule and a C-terminal fragment of CNBr-cleaved recombinant EbpS, however, did not interact with elastin. Together, these results confirm that EbpS is the cell surface molecule mediating binding of S. aureus to elastin. The inability of truncated forms of recombinant EbpS to bind to elastin suggests that the elastin binding site in EbpS is contained in the first 59 amino acids of the molecule.
DNA binding sites for putative methylation boundaries in the unmethylated region of the BRCA1 promoter

Changes in DNA methylation patterns are frequently observed in human cancers and are associated with a decrease in tumor suppressor gene expression. Hypermethylation of the BRCA1 promoter has been reported in a portion of sporadic breast tumours that correspond to a reduction in BRCA1 transcription and expression. Questions remain concerning the maintenance of methylation free zones in promoter regions of tumor suppressor genes in normal tissues. Sodium bisulfite based analysis of the BRCA1 promoter defines a methylation free zone in normal breast tissue that starts 650 bp upstream of the transcription start site and extends for 1.4 kb through most of the BRCA1 CpG island. We provide data implicating 2 proteins, Sp1 and CTCF, in the maintenance of this methylation‐free zone. Both of these proteins have been shown to function as methylation boundaries in other genes. Four Sp1 sites have been identified in the BRCA1 promoter by gel shift assays. In vivo binding of Sp1 has been confirmed at 2 of these sites in the BRCA1 promoter and at 2 CTCF sites that flank the unmethylated region. Our data suggest that these DNA binding sites for Sp1 and CTCF may act as boundary elements that are important in maintaining genomic integrity by delineating the normal methylation free BRCA1 promoter. Inactivation or disruption of these boundaries may facilitate an epigenetic “hit”, in this case DNA methylation, leading to BRCA1 downregulation and contributing to tumorigenesis, particularly the genesis of sporadic breast tumours. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
2015 Ieee International Conference on Big Data (big Data) a Scalable Approach for Data-driven Taxi Ride-sharing Simulation

—As urban population grows, cities face many challenges related to transportation, resource consumption, and the environment. Ride sharing has been proposed as an effective approach to reduce traffic congestion, gasoline consumption, and pollution. Despite great promise, researchers and policy makers lack adequate tools to assess tradeoffs and benefits of various ride-sharing strategies. Existing approaches either make unrealistic modeling assumptions or do not scale to the sizes of existing data sets. In this paper, we propose a real-time, data-driven simulation framework that supports the efficient analysis of taxi ride sharing. By modeling taxis and trips as distinct entities, our framework is able to simulate a rich set of realistic scenarios. At the same time, by providing a comprehensive set of parameters, we are able to study the taxi ride-sharing problem from different angles, considering different stakeholders' interests and constraints. To address the computational complexity of the model, we describe a new optimization algorithm that is linear in the number of trips and makes use of an efficient indexing scheme, which combined with parallelization, makes our approach scalable. We evaluate our framework and algorithm using real data – 360 million trips taken by 13,000 taxis in New York City during 2011 and 2012. The results demonstrate that our framework is effective and can provide insights into strategies for implementing city-wide ride-sharing solutions. We describe the findings of the study as well as a performance analysis of the model.
Formal Arguments, Preferences, and Natural Language Interfaces to Humans: an Empirical Evaluation

It has been claimed that computational models of argumentation provide support for complex decision making activities in part due to the close alignment between their semantics and human intuition. In this paper we assess this claim by means of an experiment: people's evaluation of formal arguments — presented in plain English — is compared to the conclusions obtained from argumentation semantics. Our results show a correspondence between the acceptability of arguments by human subjects and the justification status prescribed by the formal theory in the majority of the cases. However, post-hoc analyses show that there are some significant deviations, which appear to arise from implicit knowledge regarding the domains in which evaluation took place. We argue that in order to create argumentation systems, designers must take implicit domain specific knowledge into account.
Caustics Effects with Photo-Realistic Rendering on Movie("Cars')

Caustics effects caused by light refraction play an important role in photorealistic rendering to realize rendering like photos. This paper examines caustics effects for light and materials in photorealistic rendering techniques. This paper analyzes caustics used in 'Cars(2006)' of Pixar and realizes caustics effects by using 'Vray' used frequently for photorealistic effects recently. And this paper examines the use environment of each variable and better expression to realize effects. The results can be used as data on characteristic and capability for realization of caustics effects.
UV-VIS spectroscopy as a nondestructive and effective characterization tool for II-VI compounds

The characterization of size dependent optical properties of Group II-VI semiconductor particles provide a lot of qualitative and quantitative information about them like size, quantum yield, monodispersity, shape and presence of surface defects. Presently a review of UV-vis optical absorption spectroscopy is described for extracting useful information about these nanomaterials for the analysis of their optical properties with special reference to semiconducting quantum dots.