Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why is Cognitive Enhancement Deemed Unacceptable? The Role of Fairness, Deservingness, and Hollow Achievements

We ask why pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) is generally deemed morally unacceptable by lay people. Our approach to this question has two core elements. First, we employ an interdisciplinary perspective, using philosophical rationales as base for generating psychological models. Second, by testing these models we investigate how different normative judgments on PCE are related to each other. Based on an analysis of the relevant philosophical literature, we derive two psychological models that can potentially explain the judgment that PCE is unacceptable: the “Unfairness-Undeservingness Model” and the “Hollowness-Undeservingness Model. ” The Unfairness-Undeservingness Model holds that people judge PCE to be unacceptable because they take it to produce unfairness and to undermine the degree to which PCE-users deserve reward. The Hollowness-Undeservingness Model assumes that people judge PCE to be unacceptable because they find achievements realized while using PCE hollow and undeserved. We empirically test both models against each other using a regression-based approach. When trying to predict judgments regarding the unacceptability of PCE using judgments regarding unfairness, hollowness, and undeservingness, we found that unfairness judgments were the only significant predictor of the perceived unacceptability of PCE, explaining about 36% of variance. As neither hollowness nor undeservingness had explanatory power above and beyond unfairness, the Unfairness-Undeservingness Model proved superior to the Hollowness-Undeservingness Model. This finding also has implications for the Unfairness-Undeservingness Model itself: either a more parsimonious single-factor “Fairness Model” should replace the Unfairness-Undeservingness-Model or fairness fully mediates the relationship between undeservingness and unacceptability. Both explanations imply that participants deemed PCE unacceptable because they judged it to be unfair. We conclude that concerns about unfairness play a crucial role in the subjective unacceptability of PCE and discuss the implications of our approach for the further investigation of the psychology of PCE.
Shortest-path queries in static networks

We consider the point-to-point (approximate) shortest-path query problem, which is the following generalization of the classical single-source (SSSP) and all-pairs shortest-path (APSP) problems: we are first presented with a network (graph). A so-called preprocessing algorithm may compute certain information (a data structure or index) to prepare for the next phase. After this preprocessing step, applications may ask shortest-path or distance queries, which should be answered as fast as possible. Due to its many applications in areas such as transportation, networking, and social science, this problem has been considered by researchers from various communities (sometimes under different names): algorithm engineers construct fast route planning methods; database and information systems researchers investigate materialization tradeoffs, query processing on spatial networks, and reachability queries; and theoretical computer scientists analyze distance oracles and sparse spanners. Related problems are considered for compact routing and distance labeling schemes in networking and distributed computing and for metric embeddings in geometry as well. In this survey, we review selected approaches, algorithms, and results on shortest-path queries from these fields, with the main focus lying on the tradeoff between the index size and the query time. We survey methods for general graphs as well as specialized methods for restricted graph classes, in particular for those classes with arguable practical significance such as planar graphs and complex networks.
Engineering Properties of Silty Soil Stabilized with Lime and Rice Husk Ash and Reinforced with Waste Plastic Fiber

AbstractAlthough abundant plastic waste contaminating the environment may be utilized as reinforcing materials, a potential pozzolanic material (rice husk ash blended with lime) possesses superior properties in stabilizing soils. Engineering behavior of the stabilized clayey/silty soil reinforced with randomly distributed discrete plastic waste fibers is investigated in this paper. The results indicate that the proposed method is very effective to improve the engineering properties of the clayey/silt soil in terms of compressive, tensile, and shear strength, which further enhanced the stability and durability of the soil. Based on the compressive strength, California bearing ratio (CBR), shear strength, and failure characteristics, the optimum amount of fiber mixed in soil/lime/rice husk ash mixtures ranges from 0.4–0.8% of the dry mass.
Vascular Disease in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: A Review

Background: despite major advances in immunology and molecular biology, Multiple Sclerosis is poorly understood with regards to etiology and its immune trigger and causal pathways are substantially unknown. In recent years, vascular abnormalities associated with Multiple Sclerosis have been investigated, opening the doors to the hypothesis that in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis a vascular component could be important. Different forms of vascular abnormalities have been associated with MS: increased risk for ischemic disease, cerebral hypoperfusion, abnormalities of endothelial cells and impaired venous drainage. The aim of this review was to describe literature evidence concerning the correlation between Multiple Sclerosis and vascular dysfunction, cardiovascular risk factors and major cardiovascular events. Methods: A literature review was performed using the following databases and web search engines: PubMed – US National Library of Medicine; Google Scholar; and Ovid MEDLINE. The search included the following combination of terms: “multiple sclerosis” and endothelial dysfunction or vascular dysregulation or vascular hypothesis or risk factors or cardiovascular disease or venous thromboembolism or epidemiology. The selected articles were divided into six macro-groups according to the topic of the paper: cardiovascular risk; cardiovascular diseases; microcirculation factors; venous alterations; infectious pathogens; and vascular adverse effects of therapy. Results: patients with Multiple Sclerosis seem to have more cardiovascular risk factors and an increased risk for ischemic stroke. Several studies have demonstrated cerebral perfusion abnormalities. The relationship between the disturbances in cerebral venous outflow and neurological disorders remains an open issue that requires further studies. Conclusion: Recent evidence suggests that vascular components may be initiating triggers for neuronal pathology and subsequent neurological manifestations of the disease. The high degree of comorbidity between vascular disease and Multiple Sclerosis suggests that vascular pathology may be an important factor causing neuronal dysfunction or degeneration in multiple sclerosis.
Developing a Data-Driven Learning Interest Recommendation System to Promoting Self-Paced Learning on MOOCs

A "keywords cloud" learning interest/difficult reminding system based on learners' video watching logs and subtitles is proposed for promoting self-paced MOOC learning. By identifying the hot video segments (via video seek event counts) and weighting the keywords of hot video segments, we are able to establish the "keywords cloud" of each learning topic. This feature is valuable for learners to quick identify the most important or difficult concepts of each topic. This is also useful for the teacher to more understand which parts of the contents of each topic are most difficult for the learners which can be further improved.
Adalimumab (a fully human anti-tumour necrosis factor α monoclonal antibody) in the treatment of active rheumatoid arthritis: the initial results of five trials

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a common, chronic, idiopathic autoimmune disease, is characterised by symmetrical synovitis, inflammatory exudates in the joint cavity, and erosion of articular cartilage and marginal bone.1 Standard treatment for RA typically consists of traditional disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), corticosteroids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and analgesics.2 Despite these various treatments, many patients with RA continue to experience substantial disease activity, with progressive joint damage and accompanying functional loss. In recent years, insights into the pathophysiology of RA have lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies that target underlying disease processes, the most promising of which entails neutralisation of tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα). 3 TNFα is a potent proinflammatory cytokine that plays a critical part in the progression of inflammatory synovitis and articular matrix degradation in RA.3 Increased concentrations of TNFα are found in the synovial fluid and serum of patients with active RA.4 Derived primarily from activated monocytes and macrophages, TNFα promotes the synthesis of other proinflammatory cytokines; stimulates endothelial cells to express adhesion molecules that attract leucocytes into affected joints; accelerates the production of metalloproteinases by synovial macrophages, fibroblasts, osteoclasts, and chondrocytes; and suppresses the synthesis of cartilage proteoglycans.3,5,6 Because of these multiple actions, TNFα may have a more dominant function in the pathogenesis of RA than other proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1.3 The effects of TNFα are triggered by its binding to two different membrane receptors (p55 and p75) that are expressed by certain cell types, including neutrophils, vascular endothelial cells, and fibroblasts. Over the past two decades, investigators have not only delineated the spectrum of pathological actions of TNFα but also devised ways of effectively blocking this cytokine, offering renewed hope to patients with refractory, moderate to severe RA.3 Currently, two biologically based DMARDs …
Fundamental study of mechanical and chemical degradation mechanisms of PEM fuel cell membranes

One of the important factors determining the lifetime of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is membrane degradation and failure. The lack of effective mitigation methods is largely due to the currently very limited understanding of the underlying mechanisms for mechanical and chemical degradations of fuel cell membranes. In order to understand degradation of membranes in fuel cells, two different experimental approaches were developed; one is fuel cell testing under open circuit voltage (OCV) with bi-layer configuration of the membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) and the other is a modified gas phase Fenton's test. Accelerated degradation tests for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells are frequently conducted under open circuit voltage (OCV) conditions at low relative humidity (RH) and high temperature. With the bi-layer MEA technique, it was found that membrane degradation is highly localized across thickness direction of the membrane and qualitatively correlated with location of platinum (Pt) band through mechanical testing, Infrared (IR) spectroscopy, fluoride emission, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) measurement. One of the critical experimental observations is that mechanical behavior of membranes subjected to degradation via Fenton's reaction exhibit completely different behavior with that of membranes from the OCV testing. This result led us to believe that other critical factors such as mechanical stress may affect on membrane degradation and therefore, a modified gas phase Fenton's test setup was developed to test the hypothesis. Interestingly, the results showed that mechanical stress directly accelerates the degradation rate of ionomer membranes, implying that the rate constant for the degradation reaction is a function of mechanical stress in addition to commonly known factors such as temperature and humidity. Membrane degradation induced by mechanical stress necessitates the prediction of the stress distribution in the membrane under various conditions. One of research focuses was on the developing micromechanism-inspired continuum model for ionomer membranes. The model is the basis for stress analysis, and is based on a hyperelastic model with reptation-inspired viscous flow rule and multiplicative decomposition of viscoelastic and plastic deformation gradient. Finally, evaluation of the membrane degradation requires a fuel cell model since the degradation occurs under fuel cell operating conditions. The fuel cell model included structural mechanics models and multiphysics models which represents other phenomena such as gas and water transport, charge conservation, electrochemical reactions, and energy conservation. The combined model was developed to investigate the compression effect on fuel cell performance and membrane stress distribution.
WVU NLP Class Participation in ShARe/CLEF Challenge

The spring 2013 graduate class in NLP decided to participate in the ShARe/CLEF challenge Tasks 1 & 2. The timing for the challenge coincided nicely with the spring semester session. There were six students in the graduate class, and the challenge tasks appeared to be good material to expose students to a practical task faced by healthcare industry. The general approach used by the class is to use CRF learning algorithm using Factorie – a scala-language based toolkit. The F-scores for best results for Task 1a relaxed – 0.801, 1a strict – 0.554, 1b relaxed – 0.625 & 1b strict 0.349, respectively. Task 2 was attempted as a group task. F-scores were 0.426 and 0.428 for strict and relaxed respectively. It was a real challenge to focus on the challenge as a class project. The students did learn how to apply NER CRF engine to a practical problem.
Near-field characterization of the optical properties in higher order plasmonic resonances

Dipole and quadrupole surface plasmon polariton (LSPP) resonances of gold nanoparticle array were directly investigated by a near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) in the fiber-collection mode. Separated gold nanoparticles on the quartz substrate were fabricated by nanosphere lithography. Results demonstrate that controlling the incident polarization and angle of oblique incidence enables to excite dipolar and quadrupolar LSPP at 633- and 488-nm excitations. This observation facilitates the understanding of LSPP and interactions with nanostructures in the near field that can be used as a guideline for fabricating nanostructures in controlling spatial distributions of LSPP for ultra sensitive bio-/chemo-detectors or plasmonic metamaterials.
From Oral Hearing to Opinion in The U.S. Supreme Court

This paper provide a structured analysis of US Supreme Court Oral Hearings to enable identification of the relevant issues, factors and facts that can be used to construct a test to resolve a case. Our analysis involves the production of what we term ‘argument component trees’ (ACTs) in which the issues, facts and factors, and the relationship between these, are made explicit. We show how such ACTs can be constructed by identifying the speech acts that are used by the counsel and Justices within their dialogue. We illustrate the application of our analysis by applying it to the oral hearing for the case of Carney v. California, and we relate the majority and minority opinions delivered in that case to our ACTs. The aim of the work is to provide a formal framework that addresses a particular aspect of case-based reasoning: enabling the identification and representation of the components that are used to form a test to resolve a case and guide future behaviour.
Assessment of G-quadruplex Prediction Tools

DNA is a long polymer being famous for its doublehelix form at the lower level, and for its chromosome packaging at higher levels of detail. Nonetheless DNA exists in many possible conformations, including A-DNA, B-DNA and Z-DNA forms. B-DNA is the most common form found in cells. Non-B DNAs comprise of tetraplex (G-quadruplex), left-handed Z-DNA, and others. Several recent publications have provided significant evidence that non-B DNA structures may play a role in DNA instability and mutagenesis, leading to both DNA rearrangements and increased mutational rates, which are a hallmark of cancer related diseases. Studying the structure conformation and probability of non-B DNA structure, may help in studying diseases as well as designing of new drugs. Nevertheless, even if there are some examples of prediction tools, the topic of designing efficient prediction algorithms and tools for G-quadruplex prediction is still in its infancy.As a contribution in this new area, we present preliminary results and statistics obtained by using the state of the art software tools able to predict G-quadruplex DNA conformations starting from the primary sequence. We used existing tools as well as known structures to define the state of the art and the current value of prediction tools. We believe that our study may represent an important contribution through the definition of reliable Gquadruplex prediction tools.
Virtual tissue microarrays: a novel and viable approach to optimizing tissue microarrays for biomarker research applied to ductal carcinoma in situ

Tissue microarrays (TMAs) are effective tools for performing high‐throughput standardization analyses of biomarkers, but evidence indicating the core number required to be representative of the whole tumour is lacking. Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a non‐obligate precursor of invasive breast cancer. The number and size of cores that can best represent a DCIS lesion are unknown. Rather than performing extensive experiments using several variants of physical TMAs, the aim of this study was to develop a ‘virtual TMA’ approach that is effective at optimizing biomarker discovery and validation.
Single Crystal Elastic Constants and Calculated Aggregate Properties. A Handbook

Data on the elastic properties of single crystals has increased dramatically since Professor Simmons completed his first book in 1965. While this book is a consolidation of his earlier work, it has been extensively updated and revised to include new material and references, is far more complete, and is presented in a more useful form.This is actually a handbook consisting of computer printout in tabular format. It presents data on the elastic properties of single crystals collected from the literature through mid-1970 and the elastic properties of isotropic aggregates which are calculated according to the schemes of Voigt and Reuss for all materials, and Hashin and Shtrikman for materials with cubic symmetry. The tables include about 3000 determinations.At present it is impossible to calculate the elastic properties of a random, macroscopically isotropic aggregate of crystals from the single crystal elastic constants, but bounds may be obtained for the aggregate properties from the single crystal constants. Accordingly the book tabulates the Voigt and Reuss averages for all materials for which single crystal data has been reported. Hashin and Shtrikman have shown that the Voigt and Reuss bounds could be improved, and they have developed expressions for the corresponding bounds of aggregates of cubic crystals.In this book all four bounds (Voigt, Hashin, Shtrikman, and Reuss) are tabulated for cubic materials while Voigt and Reuss bounds only are tabulated for non-cubic materials. The elastic properties of aggregates are those in common use and include Young's modulus, shear modulus, Poisson's ration, bulk modulus, compressibility, velocity of compressional waves, and the velocity of shear waves. Although any two of these properties suffice to uniquely characterize a given material, all are tabulated because different sets are best suited for different uses.
ENHANCED DOUBLETALK DETECTION BASED ON PSEUDO-COHERENCE IN STEREO

ABSTRACT This paper aims at double-talk detection for acoustic echo cancellers enabling transmission of speech signals in ster eo. Double-talk detectors are affected by the same known non-uniqueness problem as echo cancellers. However, echo cancellers are usually adapted using NLMS-like iterative algorithms. Double-talk detectors being based on pseudo-coherence employ traditional spectral estimation techniques, which involve the use of temporal windows. These windows cause a bias of the coherence between the loudspeaker channels: this bias causes the magnitude squared coherence to be smaller than one. Therefore, the non-uniqueness problem known for echo cancellers does not exist for the mentioned type of double-talk detectors. However, the correlation between the loudspeaker channels provoke a strong bias of the inherent estimation of the echo paths. Consequently, we propose a method to decrease the influence of inter-channel correlations on the reliability of the double-talk detector.
Extracting urban patterns from location-based social networks

Social networks attract lots of new users every day and absorb from them information about events and facts happening in the real world. The exploitation of this information can help identifying mobility patterns that occur in an urban environment as well as produce services to take advantage of social commonalities between people. In this paper we set out to address the problem of extracting urban patterns from fragments of multiple and sparse people life traces, as they emerge from the participation to social network. To investigate this challenging task, we analyzed 13 millions Twitter posts (3 GB) of data in New York. Then we test upon this data a probabilistic topic models approach to automatically extract urban patterns from location-based social network data. We find that the extracted patterns can identify hotspots in the city, and recognize a number of major crowd behaviors that recur over time and space in the urban scenario.
Structure and conformational motion of seven-coordinate diorganotin(IV) complexes derived from salen and salan type ligands

Reaction of R2SnCl2 (R = Me, nBu, Ph) and the potassium salts of salenN3H3 (N,N0-bis(salicylidene)diethylenetriamine) and saleanN3H5 (N,N0-bis(o-hydroxybenzyl)diethylenetriamine) provided diorganotin(IV) complexes of the composition [Me2Sn(salenN3H)] solvate (solvate = 2.5H2O, MeOH or DMSO), [nBu2Sn(salenN3H)] H2O, [Ph2Sn(salenN3H)] 2EtOH and [Me2Sn(saleanN3H3)] 2.5H2O. In all compounds the tin atoms are seven-coordinate and have pentagonal–bipyramidal coordination environments, in which the organic substituents attached to the tin atoms occupy the axial positions. This occurs both in solution and the solid state; however, in solution the molecules are involved in conformational equilibria that require the presence of intermediates, in which the N ? Sn bonds are dissociated. Although the [saleanN3H3] 2 ligand is more flexible and basic, a very similar complexing behavior to that of [salenN3H] 2 has been found, and there is evidence that it is even a weaker ligand. Both ligands show the tendency to adopt a curved conformation within the complex, thus indicating that the dynamic process resembles the flapping of butterfly wings. However, the folding is reduced with increasing steric bulk of the organic substitutents attached to the tin atoms. The six-membered heterocyclic rings in the [R2Sn(salenN3H)] derivatives have envelope conformation, while those in [Me2Sn(saleanN3H3)] have distorted boat-conformation. Thus, small changes in the hybridization and basicity of the nitrogen atoms cause significant differences of the stability and the dynamic behavior of the resulting molecules. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.