Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age

This article draws on ‘hyperlocal’ journalism scholarship to explore the civic functions of Australian local reporting in the digital age. Through place-based case studies based on interviews with media and civic leaders from three disparate communities, we find community groups are engaging with social media, particularly Facebook, to connect locals to services and community news. Community service providers are increasingly adept at using social media and, in many cases, prefer it to legacy media to gather, disseminate and exchange news. Concurrently, legacy media have lost newsroom resources that limit their practice of ‘shoe leather’ journalism and increase their dependence on official sources without independent verification. Yet, journalists are adapting to newsroom cutbacks by forming symbiotic relationships with non-media news providers, including local police. We find there are promising alternatives for fostering civic discourse and engagement through digital technologies despite less traditional local news and a reduced capacity for verified journalism.
Push-Based Recommendations in Mobile Computing Using a Multi-Layer Contextual Approach

Nowadays, due to the high availability of heterogeneous data sources that can provide interesting information, users usually suffer from information overload. Therefore, the development of adaptive information systems that can offer personalized information and filter out irrelevant data for a user is required. Significant work has been developed to solve this problem in the area of the so-called recommendation systems. However, context information has only started to be considered recently to build recommendation systems, despite being key to obtain more accurate recommendations. Moreover, even with some context information, there is still a significant gap between the fields of mobile computing and recommendation systems. In this paper, we focus on push-based recommendations (i.e., recommendations not explicitly requested) for mobile users, as it represents the most challenging and effective approach for recommending items in mobile environments. As opposed to existing work, a generic model that fits different domains is proposed. This model is based on the definition of the concept of environment and manages the impact of dynamic events and all the actors involved in the mobile recommendation process.
Effects of Crime News on Emotional Response of Audience

The aim of this research is to find out the effects of Pakistani television news coverage of crime on the emotional response of youth. This study is conducted to explore the negative effects of crime news coverage on the youth. It was hypothesizes that “Watching crime news makes young people feel that they live in uncertain conditions”. The study is quantitative in nature and a questionnaire with open ended questions is distributed amongst the drawn sample to assess the effect. Convenience method is used for collection of data from the target population of 150 males and females respectively, living in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Cultivation theory is used for the current study. While carrying out the research it was observed that after watching crime news people have developed an insecure and perilous feeling about the society and people around them. They avoid interacting with strangers and are careful to move around and have developed concern about their families. It was concluded that females are much more affected by the impact of crime news than males.
Fatigue of Ti6Al4V Structural Health Monitoring Systems Produced by Selective Laser Melting

Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing (AM) process which is used for producing metallic components. Currently, the integrity of components produced by SLM is in need of improvement due to residual stresses and unknown fracture behavior. Titanium alloys produced by AM are capable candidates for applications in aerospace and industrial fields due to their fracture resistance, fatigue behavior and corrosion resistance. On the other hand, structural health monitoring (SHM) system technologies are promising and requested from the industry. SHM systems can monitor the integrity of a structure and during the last decades the research has primarily been influenced by bionic engineering. In that aspect a new philosophy for SHM has been developed: the so-called effective structural health monitoring (eSHM) system. The current system uses the design freedom provided by AM. The working principle of the system is based on crack detection by means of a network of capillaries that are integrated in a structure. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the functionality of Ti6Al4V produced by the SLM process in the novel SHM system and to confirm that the eSHM system can successfully detect cracks in SLM components. In this study four-point bending fatigue tests on Ti6Al4V SLM specimens with an integrated SHM system were conducted. Fractographic analysis was performed after the final failure, while finite element simulations were used in order to determine the stress distribution in the capillary region and on the component. It was proven that the SHM system does not influence the crack initiation behavior during fatigue. The results highlight the effectiveness of the eSHM on SLM components, which can potentially be used by industrial and aerospace applications.
Artificial Command Delaying for Secure Substation Remote Control: Design and Implementation

Electrical substations play a crucial role in power grids. A number of international standards, such as IEC 60870 and 61850, have emerged to modernize substations for efficient and timely control. However, owing to insufficient security consideration and implementation, the digitization of a large number of connected substations could dramatically increase the scale of damage on power grids caused by cyber attacks. In this paper, we discuss the practical design, implementation, and deployment of active command mediation defense (A*CMD), a distributed cybersecurity solution to counter attacks injecting malicious remote control commands. A*CMD takes advantage of artificial command-delaying to realize an additional layer of security for each substation in an autonomous, decentralized manner. In particular, for grid operators to make appropriate delay configuration, the procedure to find tolerable delay for a power grid model of interest is formulated and demonstrated with multiple power grid models of different sizes. We further show practical deployment options of A*CMD along with proof-of-concept implementations, whose performance and stability are evaluated with a software-based smart-grid testbed.
Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Aging—New Mechanisms and Insights: Caloric restriction confers persistent anti-oxidative, pro-angiogenic, and anti-inflammatory effects and promotes anti-aging miRNA expression profile in cerebromicrovascular endothelial cells of aged rats

In rodents, moderate caloric restriction (CR) without malnutrition exerts significant cerebrovascular protective effects, improving cortical microvascular density and endothelium-dependent vasodilation, but the underlying cellular mechanisms remain elusive. To elucidate the persisting effects of CR on cerebromicrovascular endothelial cells (CMVECs), primary CMVECs were isolated from young (3 mo old) and aged (24 mo old) ad libitum-fed and aged CR F344xBN rats. We found an age-related increase in cellular and mitochondrial oxidative stress, which is prevented by CR. Expression and transcriptional activity of Nrf2 are both significantly reduced in aged CMVECs, whereas CR prevents age-related Nrf2 dysfunction. Expression of miR-144 was upregulated in aged CMVECs, and overexpression of miR-144 significantly decreased expression of Nrf2 in cells derived from both young animals and aged CR rats. Overexpression of a miR-144 antagomir in aged CMVECs significantly decreases expression of miR-144 and upregulates Nrf2. We found that CR prevents age-related impairment of angiogenic processes, including cell proliferation, adhesion to collagen, and formation of capillary-like structures and inhibits apoptosis in CMVECs. CR also exerts significant anti-inflammatory effects, preventing age-related increases in the transcriptional activity of NF-κB and age-associated pro-inflammatory shift in the endothelial secretome. Characterization of CR-induced changes in miRNA expression suggests that they likely affect several critical functions in endothelial cell homeostasis. The predicted regulatory effects of CR-related differentially expressed miRNAs in aged CMVECs are consistent with the anti-aging endothelial effects of CR observed in vivo. Collectively, we find that CR confers persisting anti-oxidative, pro-angiogenic, and anti-inflammatory cellular effects, preserving a youthful phenotype in rat cerebromicrovascular endothelial cells, suggesting that through these effects CR may improve cerebrovascular function and prevent vascular cognitive impairment.
Automatic Sentence Break Disambiguation for Thai

Unlike English, there is no explicit sentence marker in Thai language. Conventionally, a space is placed at the end of the sentence when written in Thai. But it does not mean that a space always indicates the sentence boundary. In this paper, we propose the algorithm, which is a feature-based approach, to extract sentences from a paragraph by detecting the appropriate sentence breaking spaces. The algorithm considers the context around a space for determining the space as whether a sentence breaking space or not. The previous method, probabilistic POS trigram approach, considers only the coarse information of part-of-speech in a limited range of context whereas the feature-based approach considers as many features as possible. A feature can be anything that examines a specific information in the context around the target word sequence, such as context words and collocations. To automatically extract such features from a training corpus, we employ the learning algorithm, namely Winnow. The experimental results showed the effectiveness of Winnow comparing with POS trigram, and also demonstrated that Winnow is superior to POS trigram in our task.
Complex Digital Filter Designs for Audio Processing in Doppler Ultrasound System

A medical Doppler ultrasound system has a spectrum display that indicates the blood flow direction, whether the blood flows forward or away from a probe. It also has Doppler audio outputs. In particular, the latter is a special process peculiar to the Doppler ultrasound system and separates the blood flow direction and outputs from the left and right speakers. Owing to this function, the existence of a blood flow is quickly detectable. When changing conventional analog signal-processing into digital signal-processing, we researched many processing systems of Doppler audio. First, target performances, such as a response time and direction separation, were set up, and six kinds of digital signal-processing systems were examined. Further, we investigated some new anti-aliasing processing systems unique to Doppler ultrasound system. We compared three kinds of anti-aliasing processing systems. Consequently, we clarified that a complex IIR (infinite impulse response) filter system has an excellent response and a low calculation load.
The onset of homologous chromosome pairing during Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis

We have determined the position within the nucleus of homologous sites of the histone gene cluster in Drosophila melanogaster using in situ hybridization and high-resolution, three-dimensional wide field fluorescence microscopy. A 4.8-kb biotinylated probe for the histone gene repeat, located approximately midway along the short arm of chromosome 2, was hybridized to whole-mount embryos in late syncytial and early cellular blastoderm stages. Our results show that the two homologous histone loci are distinct and separate through all stages of the cell cycle up to nuclear cycle 13. By dramatic contrast, the two homologous clusters were found to colocalize with high frequency during interphase of cycle 14. Concomitant with homolog pairing at cycle 14, both histone loci were also found to move from their position near the midline of the nucleus toward the apical side. This result suggests that coincident with the initiation of zygotic transcription, there is dramatic chromosome and nuclear reorganization between nuclear cycles 13 and 14.
Phosphorylation of vimentin in mitotically selected cells. In vitro cyclic AMP-independent kinase and calcium-stimulated phosphatase activities

The phosphorylation of the intermediate filament protein vimentin was examined under in vitro conditions. Cell cytosol and Triton-insoluble cytoskeleton preparations from nonmitotic and mitotically selected mouse L-929 cells exhibited vimentin kinase activity that is apparently cAMP and Ca2+ independent. The level of vimentin kinase activity was greater in preparations from mitotically selected cells than nonmitotic cells. Addition of Ca2+ to mitotic cytosol decreased net vimentin phosphorylation. Dephosphorylation experiments indicated that there is phosphatase activity in these preparations which is stimulated by addition of Ca2+. Fractionation of cytosol from nonmitotic cells on DEAE-Sephacel and phosphocellulose revealed a single major vimentin kinase activity (peak I). Fractionation of cytosol from mitotically selected cells yielded a similar activity (peak I) and an additional vimentin kinase activity (peak II) that was not found in nonmitotic preparations. Based on substrate specificity and lack of inhibition to characteristic inhibitors, the semipurified peak I and II vimentin kinase activities appear to be cAMP-independent enzymes that are distinct from casein kinases I and II. Phosphopeptide mapping studies indicated that both peak I and peak II vimentin kinases phosphorylate tryptic peptides in the NH2-terminal region of vimentin that are phosphorylated in intact cells. Electron microscopic examination of reconstituted vimentin filaments phosphorylated with both semipurified kinases indicated that phosphorylation induced filament disassembly. These experiments indicate that the increased phosphorylation of vimentin during mitosis may be catalyzed by a discrete cAMP-independent protein kinase. In addition, preparations from mitotic cells exhibited a Ca2+-stimulated phosphatase activity, suggesting that Ca2+ may play a regulatory role in vimentin dephosphorylation during mitosis.
On the physical layer security in large scale cellular networks

This paper studies the information-theoretic secrecy performance in large-scale cellular networks based on a stochastic geometry framework. The locations of both base stations and the mobile users are modeled as independent two-dimensional Poisson point processes. We consider a key feature of the cellular network, namely, information exchange between base stations, and characterize its impact on the achievable secrecy rate of an arbitrary downlink transmission with a certain portion of the mobile users acting as potential eavesdroppers. In particular, analytical results are presented under diverse assumptions on the availability of eavesdroppers' location information at the serving base station, which captures the benefit from the exchange of mobile users' location information between base stations.
A LATENT VARIABLE MODELLING APPROACH TO THE ACOUSTIC-TO-ARTICULATORY MAPPING PROBLEM

We present a latent variable approach to the acoustic-to-articulatory mapping problem, where different vocal tract conﬁgu-rations can give rise to the same acoustics. In latent variable modelling, the combined acoustic and articulatory data are assumed to have been generated by an underlying low-dimensional process. A parametric probabilistic model is estimated and mappings are derived from the respective conditional distributions. This has the advantage over other methods, such as articulatory codebooks or neural networks, of directly addressing the nonuniqueness problem. We demonstrate our approach with electropalatographic and acoustic data from the ACCOR database.
A Novel Adaptive Fuzzy Control of the Inverted Pendulum System

A new adaptive fuzzy control algorithm which combines sliding mode controller and a proportional-integral controller into a single adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller (AFSMC) is proposed for a nonlinear system - an inverted pendulum system. The AFSMC can tackle the control problem of unknown nonlinear systems and systems with modeling uncertainties and external disturbance. The role of the controller is to schedule control under different operating conditions. In this way, the advantage of each control method before combining can be retained while any disadvantages are removed. The proposed control scheme provides good transient and robust performance. Moreover, the drawback of chattering phenomenon in SMC can be avoided. The AFSMC scheme is proved to guarantee the global stability of the closed-loop system.
On Objective Functions for Fixed-Outline Floorplanning

Fixed-outline floorplanning enables multilevel hierarchical design, where aspect ratios and area of floorplans are usually imposed by higher level floorplanning and must be satisfied. Simulated Annealing is widely used in the floorplanning problem. It is well-known that the solution space, solution perturbation, and objective function are very important for Simulated Annealing. In this paper, we focus on the objective functions used in FOFP problem. Up to now, many kinds of objective functions were proposed in the existing researches, but those objective functions had many limitations, and the applicable situation is not clearly. We summarize and analyze the existing objective functions used in Fixed-Outline floorplanning methods, and then suggest some new objective functions respectively used in the fixed-oultine floorplanning with and without wire-length optimization, respectively.
RBPmap: a web server for mapping binding sites of RNA-binding proteins

Regulation of gene expression is executed in many cases by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that bind to mRNAs as well as to non-coding RNAs. RBPs recognize their RNA target via specific binding sites on the RNA. Predicting the binding sites of RBPs is known to be a major challenge. We present a new webserver, RBPmap, freely accessible through the website http://rbpmap.technion. ac.il/ for accurate prediction and mapping of RBP binding sites. RBPmap has been developed specifically for mapping RBPs in human, mouse and Drosophila melanogaster genomes, though it supports other organisms too. RBPmap enables the users to select motifs from a large database of experimentally defined motifs. In addition, users can provide any motif of interest, given as either a consensus or a PSSM. The algorithm for mapping the motifs is based on a Weighted-Rank approach, which considers the clustering propensity of the binding sites and the overall tendency of regulatory regions to be conserved. In addition, RBPmap incorporates a position-specific background model, designed uniquely for different genomic regions, such as splice sites, 5’ and 3’ UTRs, non-coding RNA and intergenic regions. RBPmap was tested on high-throughput RNA-binding experiments and was proved to be highly accurate.
Gossiping to the Top

Despite its omnipresence, quantitative research examining both the nature and the function of adolescent gossip has been limited. The present study aimed to address this limitation in the literature by examining the nature and function of adolescent gossip; in particular, it aimed to explore observed differences between the gossip of those popular and non-popular adolescent dyads. Using both observational lab–based and sociometric school–based methods, the present study assessed the associations between social status and gossip functionality among 130 ninth grade students (92 females). Popular adolescent dyads engaged in more instances of gossip and were more likely to use gossip to foster intimacy, establish norms, and share both information and their opinions. Results also pointed to potential mechanisms by which popular adolescent dyads may gather alliances that support their status within the social hierarchy.
Performance evaluation of classification algorithms by excluding the most relevant attributes for dipper/non-dipper pattern estimation in Type-2 DM patients

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a high prevalence disease that causes cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. On the other hand, the absence of physiologic night-time blood pressure decrease can further lead to morbidity problems such as target organ damage both in diabetics and non-diabetics patients. However, the Non-dipping pattern can only be measured by the 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) device. ABPM has certain challenges such as insufficient devices to distribute to patients, lack of trained staff or high costs. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to develop a classifier model that can achieve a sufficiently high accuracy percentage for Dipper/non-Dipper blood pressure pattern in patients by excluding ABPM data. The study was conducted with 56 Turkish patients in Marmara University Hypertension and Atherosclerosis Center and School of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology between the years 2010 and 2012. Our purpose was to find out if the proposed method would be able to detect non-dipping/dipping pattern through various data mining algorithms in WEKA platform such as J48, NaiveBayes, MLP, RBF. All algorithms were run to get accurate Dipper/non-Dipper pattern estimation excluding the attributes of ABPM data. The results show that Neural Network (MLP and RBF) algorithms mostly produced reasonably high classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity percentages reaching up to 90.63% when the attributes were reduced. However in medical sciences, sensitivity is taken as a valid and reliable indication for diagnosis. Therefore, MLP had a highersensitivity percentage (83.3%) than others. Also, ROC values, which had the closest values to 1, were achieved by RBF for each selection mode. ROC was 0.872 for 10 fold CV mode and 0.856 for percentage split mode. Finally, ANN MLP and RBF algorithms were used, and was observed that RBF algorithm had the highest success rate in terms of sensitivity that was 83.3%. In medical diagnosis, a higher sensitivity performance is regarded as more valid indication of metric than a higher specificity. The proposed model could represent an innovative approach that might simplify and fasten the diagnosis process by skipping some steps in Dipper/non-Dipper diagnosis/prognosis.
From Genotype to Functional Phenotype: Unraveling the Metabolomic Features of Colorectal Cancer

Much effort in recent years has been expended in defining the genomic and epigenetic alterations that characterize colorectal adenocarcinoma and its subtypes. However, little is known about the functional ramifications related to various subtypes. Metabolomics, the study of small molecule intermediates in disease, provides a snapshot of the functional phenotype of colorectal cancer. Data, thus far, have characterized some of the metabolic perturbations that accompany colorectal cancer. However, further studies will be required to identify biologically meaningful metabolic subsets, including those corresponding to specific genetic aberrations. Moreover, further studies are necessary to distinguish changes due to tumor and the host response to tumor.