Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is sexuality research ‘dirty work’? Institutionalized stigma in the production of sexual knowledge

Sexuality research has a long history of controversy in the USA. This article examines sexuality research as a form of “dirty work,” an occupation that is simultaneously socially necessary and stigmatized. Using survey data of contemporary sociologists engaged in sexuality research, historical data on 20th century sexologists, and content analysis of top-tier sociology journals, I focus on the university system and its related functions of publishing, funding, and ethical review boards. I argue that sexuality research is constructed as dirty work by systematic practices of the university system, and further suggest that these practices impose stigma effects that are not simply individual but represent persistent patterns of institutional inequality. Further, I show how these institutional practices are shaped by cultural schemas regarding sexuality, enacted through cognitive and affective bias of institutional actors. The construction of sexuality research as dirty work affects not only researchers themselves but shapes the broad production of sexual knowledge.
Compost-Induced Suppression of Pythium Damping-Off Is Mediated by Fatty-Acid-Metabolizing Seed-Colonizing Microbial Communities

ABSTRACT Leaf composts were studied for their suppressive effects on Pythium ultimum sporangium germination, cottonseed colonization, and the severity of Pythium damping-off of cotton. A focus of the work was to assess the role of fatty-acid-metabolizing microbial communities in disease suppression. Suppressiveness was expressed within the first few hours of seed germination as revealed by reduced P. ultimum sporangium germination, reduced seed colonization, and reduced damping-off in transplant experiments. These reductions were not observed when cottonseeds were sown in a conducive leaf compost. Microbial consortia recovered from the surface of cottonseeds during the first few hours of germination in suppressive compost (suppressive consortia) induced significant levels of damping-off suppression, whereas no suppression was induced by microbial consortia recovered from cottonseeds germinated in conducive compost (conducive consortia). Suppressive consortia rapidly metabolized linoleic acid, whereas conducive consortia did not. Furthermore, populations of fatty-acid-metabolizing bacteria and actinobacteria were higher in suppressive consortia than in conducive consortia. Individual bacterial isolates varied in their ability to metabolize linoleic acid and protect seedlings from damping-off. Results indicate that communities of compost-inhabiting microorganisms colonizing cottonseeds within the first few hours after sowing in a Pythium-suppressive compost play a major role in the suppression of P. ultimum sporangium germination, seed colonization, and damping-off. Results further indicate that fatty acid metabolism by these seed-colonizing bacterial consortia can explain the Pythium suppression observed.
Civil society in Georgia: expectations versus reality

Abstract Academic analysts, political commentators and activists in Georgia are almost unanimous in their assessment that the public in Georgia is generally passive, civil society is weak, and that this may be one of the key reasons why Georgia – despite numerous democratic openings – keeps failing to consolidate its democratic institutions. In order to measure the strengths and weaknesses of Georgian civil society, the present article uses interviews with respondents from the Georgian non-governmental organization sector and academia on two areas: (a) citizen participation: to what extent is civic participation in the public sphere aimed at advancing shared interests and (b) influence on policy-making: to what extent is Georgian civil society able to foster popular influence on political and economic developments. This paper applies the concept of delegative democracy to contemporary developments in Georgia, and argues that one of the major factors which contribute to this trend in Georgia is a weak civil society and, therefore, a lack of intermediary institutions to safeguard democratic norms.
Mining temporal footprints from Wikipedia

Discovery of temporal information is key for organising knowledge and therefore the task of extracting and representing temporal information from texts has received an increasing interest. In this paper we focus on the discovery of temporal footprints from encyclopaedic descriptions. Temporal footprints are time-line periods that are associated to the existence of specific concepts. Our approach relies on the extraction of date mentions and prediction of lower and upper boundaries that define temporal footprints. We report on several experiments on persons’ pages from Wikipedia in order to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed methods.
Communication performance of children with Down Syndrome: An ICF-CY based multiple case study

Enhancing communication performance skills may help children with Down Syndrome (DS) to expand their opportunities for participation in daily life. It is a clinical challenge for speech-language pathologists (SLP) to disentangle various mechanisms that contribute to the language and communication problems that children with DS encounter. Without clarity of different levels of functioning, appropriate interventions may be poorly conceived or improperly implemented. In the present study, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health – Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY) framework was used to classify contributing factors to communication performance in a multiple case study of six young children with DS. Within a comprehensive assessment, we identified individual and environmental facilitators and barriers, leading to an integrative profile of communication performance (IPCP) for each child. Whereas these six children shared a developmental, and/or expressive vocabulary age and/or level of communicative intent, the children faced similar but also unique personal and environmental factors that play an important role in their communication performance. Our data reveal that a combination of different factors may lead to the same language outcomes and vice versa, based on a unique pattern of interdependency of ICF-CY domains. Planning SLP interventions for enhancing communication performance in children with DS should therefore be based on a comprehensive view on the competences and limitations of every individual child and its significant communication partners. This evaluation should address facilitators and barriers in body functions, structures, activities, participation and environment, with a specific focus on individual strengths. The ICF-CY provides a useful framework for constructing an IPCP that serves this purpose.
SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING USING DENSE CAMERA ARRAYS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Synthetic aperture imaging is a technique that projects images of a scene from different views on to a virtual focal surface, enabling us to “see through” occlusions in the scene. Using a 100-camera array we have used synthetic aperture imaging to view objects concealed behind dense foliage and to track a person moving through a crowd. The ability to see through occlusions makes synthetic aperture imaging a potentially powerful tool for surveillance. This work makes two contributions. First, we characterize the image warps required for synthetic aperture imaging using projective geometry. This analysis leads to a robust camera calibration procedure for synthetic aperture imaging. Our analysis also shows the relation between the geometric complexity of the image warps and camera/focal plane configurations. In particular, we show that we can vary the focus through families of frontoparallel and tilted focal planes by simply shifting and adding the camera images. As image shifts are relatively simple to realize in hardware, this leads to a real-time system, which we demonstrate for tracking a person moving through a crowd. Second, we explore methods to achieve sharp focus at every pixel in the synthetic aperture image by reconstructing the 3D surfaces of the occluded objects we wish to see. We compare classical shape from stereo with shape from synthetic aperture focus, and describe variants of stereo that improves image contrast by deleting some of the light rays that are incident on the occluder.
Conspicuous Leisure: Optimal Income Taxation When Both Relative Consumption and Relative Leisure Matter

Previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure comparisons. This paper considers a two-type optimal nonlinear income tax model where people care both about their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption positionality typically implies higher marginal income tax rates for both the high-ability and the low-ability type, whereas leisure positionality has an offsetting role. However, this offsetting role is not symmetric; concern about relative leisure implies a progressive income tax component, i.e., a component that is larger for the high-ability than for the low-ability type. Moreover, leisure positionality does not modify the policy rule for public good provision when the income tax is optimally chosen.
THE EVALUATIONS OF HURRICANE BDA SCHEME WITH WRF 3 DVAR

While numerical prediction of hurricane tracks has improved tremendously over the past several decades (Leslie and Holland 1995), there has been little appreciable improvement in hurricane intensity forecast skill over the ocean and at landfall. Similar to the fact that hurricane initial position is important for the track forecast, it is plausible that an appropriate initial vortex structure and intensity could contribute to the subsequent intensity forecast. Although there are many aspects of requirements to improve the forecast of hurricane intensity, providing accurate initial vortex is definitely one of the critical components. This is the task for the data assimilation community.
Thermally Unstable Gating of the Most Common Cystic Fibrosis Mutant Channel (ΔF508)

Background: Thermal stability of the common cystic fibrosis mutant channel (ΔF508-CFTR) is unclear. Results: ΔF508-CFTR channels inactivate at 36.5 °C in excised patches. Constitutive cytosolic loop mutations induce an ATP-independent activity in ΔF508-CFTR that is thermally stable. Conclusion: ΔF508 mutation strongly disrupts ATP-dependent gating at physiologic temperature but spares ATP-free gating. Significance: Our results may inform new treatment strategies. Most cystic fibrosis (CF) cases are caused by the ΔF508 mutation in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), which disrupts both the processing and gating of this chloride channel. The cell surface expression of ΔF508-CFTR can be “rescued” by culturing cells at 26–28 °C and treating cells with small molecule correctors or intragenic suppressor mutations. Here, we determined whether these various rescue protocols induce a ΔF508-CFTR conformation that is thermally stable in excised membrane patches. We also tested the impact of constitutive cytosolic loop mutations that increase ATP-independent channel activity (K978C and K190C/K978C) on ΔF508-CFTR function. Low temperature-rescued ΔF508-CFTR channels irreversibly inactivated with a time constant of 5–6 min when excised patches were warmed from 22 °C to 36.5 °C. A panel of CFTR correctors and potentiators that increased ΔF508-CFTR maturation or channel activity failed to prevent this inactivation. Conversely, three suppressor mutations in the first nucleotide binding domain rescued ΔF508-CFTR maturation and stabilized channel activity at 36.5 °C. The constitutive loop mutations increased ATP-independent activity of low temperature-rescued ΔF508-CFTR but did not enhance protein maturation. Importantly, the ATP-independent activities of these ΔF508-CFTR constructs were stable at 36.5 °C, whereas their ATP-dependent activities were not. Single channel recordings of this thermally stable ATP-independent activity revealed dynamic gating and unitary currents of normal amplitudes. We conclude that: (i) ΔF508-CFTR gating is highly unstable at physiologic temperature; (ii) most rescue protocols do not prevent this thermal instability; and (iii) ATP-independent gating and the pore are spared from ΔF508-induced thermal instability, a finding that may inform alternative treatment strategies.
EXstream: Explaining Anomalies in Event Stream Monitoring

In this paper, we present the EXstream system that provides high-quality explanations for anomalous behaviors that users annotate on CEP-based monitoring results. Given the new requirements for explanations, namely, conciseness, consistency with human interpretation, and prediction power, most existing techniques cannot produce explanations that satisfy all three of them. The key technical contributions of this work include a formal definition of optimally explaining anomalies in CEP monitoring, and three key techniques for generating sufficient feature space, characterizing the contribution of each feature to the explanation, and selecting a small subset of features as the optimal explanation, respectively. Evaluation using two real-world use cases shows that EXstream can outperform existing techniques significantly in conciseness and consistency while achieving comparable high prediction power and retaining a highly efficient implementation of a data stream system.
MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: A SAVVY CASE STUDY

This paper investigates the linkages between information and communication technology and firm performance. The findings show that information and communication technologies alone cannot produce sustainable advantages, but that firms must organize and manage information and communication technologies in such a way as to leverage the complementary human and business resources. The results also suggest that adopting information technology has positive effects on innovative practices, which increases the competitive advantage of firms.
Jacobian Approach to Joint Adaptation to Noise , Channel and Vocal Tract Length

This paper describes the Jacobian approach to simultaneously adapting acoustic models to unknown noise, channel and vocal tract length from a supervised adaptation data. As has been both theoretically and experimentally shown, Jacobian adaptation is one of most efficient methods for model adaptation if the target condition is close to the initial condition. It utilizes the linear relationship in the neighbor of the initial condition which in turn can be used in decomposition of multiple factors. The analytic relationship between noise, channel, vocal tract length and the observed cepstrum is linearized using the Jacobian matrices. Least squares fit gives the estimates of noise, channel and vocal tract stretch parameters. Experimental evaluation gave a significant improvement to the recognition accuracy.
Contemporary Marriages: Comparative Perspectives on a Changing Institution

This is a collection of essays by various authors on aspects of contemporary marriage. The geographic focus is on the developed countries as a whole and on the United States in particular. The book begins with a general review of the meaning and significance of marriage in contemporary society. Part 1 contains four papers on the revolution in marital behavior and includes an article concerning the future of marriage an analysis of differences between blacks and whites in the decline of U.S. marriages and studies on consensual unions in France and the United States. Part 2 examines the limits of variation in marital patterns. Part 3 contains comparative studies of marital change concerning the United States Japan China Southern Africa and the Mormons. Part 4 is concerned with the law and changing sex roles and Part 5 with calculation and emotion in marriage.
The prognostic significance of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in breast cancer.

BACKGROUND This study investigates the influence of epithelial-mesenchymal transition on prognosis in breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS Eighty breast carcinomas as well as 6 breast cancer cell lines were analysed immunohistochemically for the expression of epithelial keratins (K) K8, K19 and mesenchymal vimentin. Protein expression was correlated with histopathological factors and clinical follow-up. RESULTS Suppression of K8 and K19 occurred in the majority of the tumours (72.5% and 65%), while aberrant expression of vimentin was found in 21.2% of the tumours. Suppression of K8 as well as expression of vimentin was significantly correlated with short survival (p < 0.004 and p < 0.006). Moreover HER2 overexpression significantly correlated with K19 (p < 0.0004) and vimentin (p < 0.0005). In cell lines with increasing invasive potential, epithelial keratins were lost in favour of mesenchymal vimentin. CONCLUSION The transition from epithelial keratin to mesenchymal vimentin expression marks an important step in the malignant progression of breast cancer.
Meta-Rationality in Cognitive Science

The great rationality debate in cognitive science (Tetlock and Mellers 2002) has largely been conducted with a narrow view of human rationality in mind. A minority voice in the debate has been theorists who take a broader view of rationality â one that does not accept current desires and goals is given and that takes a longer view of decisions throughout a personâs life. Schwartzâs target article is clearly in the tradition of those advocating a broader view of how we conceive rationality. It has many affinities with the meta-rationality that I have previously advocated for decision science.
IRF‐5 and NF‐κB p50 co‐regulate IFN‐β and IL‐6 expression in TLR9‐stimulated human plasmacytoid dendritic cells

Synthetic oligonucleotides (ODN) expressing CpG motifs mimic the ability of bacterial DNA to trigger the innate immune system via TLR9. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) make a critical contribution to the ensuing immune response. This work examines the induction of antiviral (IFN‐β) and pro‐inflammatory (IL‐6) cytokines by CpG‐stimulated human pDCs and the human CAL‐1 pDC cell line. Results show that interferon regulatory factor‐5 (IRF‐5) and NF‐κB p50 are key co‐regulators of IFN‐β and IL‐6 expression following TLR9‐mediated activation of human pDCs. The nuclear accumulation of IRF‐1 was also observed, but this was a late event that was dependant on type 1 IFN and unrelated to the initiation of gene expression. IRF‐8 was identified as a novel negative regulator of gene activation in CpG‐stimulated pDCs. As variants of IRF‐5 and IRF‐8 were recently found to correlate with susceptibility to certain autoimmune diseases, these findings are relevant to our understanding of the pharmacologic effects of “K” ODN and the role of TLR9 ligation under physiologic, pathologic, and therapeutic conditions.
On the Complexity of the Bernstein Combinatorial Problem

Every multivariate polynomial p(x), x = (x1;:::;xn)2 [0; 1] n , is enclosed in the interval given by the smallest and the greatest of its coefcients in the Tensorial Bernstein Basis (TBB). Knowing that the total number of these TBB coecients is exponential with respect to the number of variables n, Q n=1 (1 + di), even if all partial degrees di equal 1, a combinatorial problem arises: is it possible to compute in polynomial time the smallest and the greatest coecients? This article proves that the 3-SAT problem, known to be NP-complete, polynomially reduces to the above dened combinatorial problem, which let us consequently conclude that this problem is NP-hard.
WeiboStand: capturing Chinese breaking news using Weibo "tweets"

Weibo is the premier microblog service in China, which is nicknamed as the "Chinese Twitter". Weibo messages consist of text messages, short links, images, audio and video. Its text is restricted to 140 Chinese characters. Since Twitter is blocked in the mainland of China, Weibo is the dominant microblog service in China. The dominance of Weibo in China makes it an obvious choice for capturing late breaking news. This paper describes the implementation of a system for capturing messages corresponding to late breaking news as well as a visualization tool that can display Weibo news messages on a map interface. There are several technical challenges to building this system. First, methods to automatically recognize and disambiguate geographical locations in messages written in Chinese. Second, due to the lack of a free accessible real-time streaming API as that similar to the Twitter Public Streaming API, a new strategy to collect the most recent news-related Weibo messages is devised. The system also uses news from Chinese news RSS feeds as complementary sources.
Proinsulin and age in general population

Abstract Objective. The objective of this study was to assess the relationship between fasting proinsulin (PI) and age in general population and to determine whether there are differences regarding this association in obese and non-obese persons. Methods. A random population-based sample (n=656) of Romanians (26–80 years) living in Bucharest, Romania was studied; 432 persons had diabetes and they were not analyzed in this paper. Circulating levels of fasting plasma glucose (FPG), fasting plasma insulin (FPI), fasting plasma proinsulin (FPP), fasting plasma C-peptide, HbA1c, lipid profile, creatinine, urea were measured. The homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), HOMA-B, and Quicki index were also calculated. Results. For all participants proinsulin was the highest in the third quartile of the age group (59-67 years), with a median proinsulin of 5.8 pmol/L. Subsequently, proinsulin increased with age, from 2.6 pmol/L for participants aged 20-51 years, to 4.7 pmol/L for participants aged 51-59 years; proinsulin levels decreased in the upper quartile 4.8 pmol/L for those aged over 67 years. In sex-specific analyses, proinsulin increased with age for both men and women, except for those in the upper quartile. The prevalence of the obesity was 30.4% (n=68); obesity prevalence did not increase with age (p=0.26). Fasting proinsulin levels significantly increased with body mass index (BMI) category from lean (n=67, 2.9 pmol/L) to overweight (n=89, 4.5 pmol/L) and obese (n=69, 6.63 pmol/L) (p<0.0001). Conclusions. Our study has demonstrated a close association between age and elevated proinsulin and proinsulin/insulin ratio in general population. Abbreviations: BMI – body mass index, BP – blood pressure, DM – diabetes mellitus, eGFR– estimated glomerular filtration rate, FPI – fasting plasma insulin, FPG – fasting plasma glucose, FPP– fasting plasma proinsulin, HbA1c – glycosylated hemoglobin, HOMA-IR – the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance, HOMA-B – the homeostatic model for assessment of B-cell function, IGT – impaired glucose tolerance, MetS – metabolic syndrome, PIR – proinsulin to insulin ratio, WC – waist circumference, HDL-C – high density lipoprotein cholesterol, TG – triglycerides, TC – total cholesterol, T2DM – type 2 diabetes.