Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The social support networks of internet users

The available research indicates mixed results regarding the internet’s role in social relations. The article contributes to this research by studying the provision of support in egocentred social networks. Data regarding size, structure and communication channels were assessed through two specially designed surveys. The results show that the internet has a relatively limited impact on social relationships. Internet users have slightly larger social networks only in certain socially de-privileged segments (e.g. divorced, less educated). However, they reveal some specifics with respect to the structure of networks (more friends and less kin, weaker ties) and communication channels (typically the internet is used as a complement). The article also illustrates certain serious problems when drawing a causal inference from non-experimental data.
Analysis of a variable stiffness differential drive (VSDD)

In robotics, differential mechanisms are widely used when lightweightness and compactness are a requisite for the robot design. Moreover, the last decades have seen the rise of (variable) compliant acuators as important elements to perform safe interaction and dynamic tasks. This paper introduces a Variable Stiffness Differential Drive (VSDD), i.e., a differential transmissions with variable stiffness actuators (VSAs), and presents a dynamic analysis. The analysis shows that, when variable stiffness actuators are used in coupled differential transmissions, the allowable stiffness range at the output of the system depends on the position of the springs inside the device. In particular, independent output joint stiffness can be obtained by dislocating the actuation from the elastic elements.
Consumption Structure Evolutions in an Aging Society and Implications for the Social Security System

China fs social security system sees a critical challenge with the rapidly aging population. This paper assesses the heterogeneous effects of population aging on personal budget allocation across domestic expenditure categories. With China fs household survey data, we break down each component of a household expenditure to its constituent members. We find consistent and robust age profiles of the composition of personal consumption expenditures. Incorporating the estimated results with the population forecast data, we predict that the shares of food, household facilities, articles and services, health care and medical services, and residence in domestic consumption tend to rise, whereas the shares of clothing, transportation and communication, education, culture and recreation services, and miscellaneous goods and services tend to fall in the near future. The evolution of China fs domestic consumption structure along with its demographic change have important implications to the sustainability issue of its social security system.
Investigation of security on Chinese smartwatches

This study investigated the information stored on smartwatches and how to retrieve this information from three Chinese smartwatches: the Xiaomi Amazfit Bip, the Lemfo KW18, and the Lemfo LEM8. An estimation of smartwatch usage within a business environment has been made, including the risks these use cases bring. This depends on the functionalities of the watches, the usage of the watch, and what data is stored on them. However, data from contacts and Whatsapp messages synchronised from the mobile phone can be retrieved from the flash memory of the Lemfo smartwatches. Through USB connection a flash memory extraction can be performed with Flash tool and with a Bluetooth connection it was possible to send fake notifications to the Lemfo KW18 and the Amazfit Bip. The investigated smartwatches have limited security measures in place, root permission is not required in order to extract data through an USB connection. The Bluetooth Low Energy stack ensures that there can only be one active connection with a device simultaneously, which limited the interception possibilities. Awareness on the possibility that information can be stored on a smartwatch is needed. Some smartwatches have security functions, like a pin code or a remote wipe option. According to the Dutch National Security Center, it is best practise to use these options.
Bleeding problems in patients undergoing segmental liver transplantation

&NA; Liver transplantation is associated with a great risk of bleeding, which is of both surgical and medical etiopathogenesis. All phases of the transplantation are characterized by a complicated and continuously evolving derangement of pro‐ and anticoagulant factors, which result in coagulopathy. The magnitude of this coagulopathy varies between patients and therefore must be corrected on an individual basis. During the different phases of the transplantation, treatment must be targeted with the aim of controlling the bleeding according to its pathogenesis. This paper analyzes the problems associated with the monitoring and correction of coagulation during the different phases of liver transplantation, with specific focus on the idiosyncrasies of segmental liver transplantation.
Parental Genome Dosage Imbalance Deregulates Imprinting in Arabidopsis

In mammals and in plants, parental genome dosage imbalance deregulates embryo growth and might be involved in reproductive isolation between emerging new species. Increased dosage of maternal genomes represses growth while an increased dosage of paternal genomes has the opposite effect. These observations led to the discovery of imprinted genes, which are expressed by a single parental allele. It was further proposed in the frame of the parental conflict theory that parental genome imbalances are directly mirrored by antagonistic regulations of imprinted genes encoding maternal growth inhibitors and paternal growth enhancers. However these hypotheses were never tested directly. Here, we investigated the effect of parental genome imbalance on the expression of Arabidopsis imprinted genes FERTILIZATION INDEPENDENT SEED2 (FIS2) and FLOWERING WAGENINGEN (FWA) controlled by DNA methylation, and MEDEA (MEA) and PHERES1 (PHE1) controlled by histone methylation. Genome dosage imbalance deregulated the expression of FIS2 and PHE1 in an antagonistic manner. In addition increased dosage of inactive alleles caused a loss of imprinting of FIS2 and MEA. Although FIS2 controls histone methylation, which represses MEA and PHE1 expression, the changes of PHE1 and MEA expression could not be fully accounted for by the corresponding fluctuations of FIS2 expression. Our results show that parental genome dosage imbalance deregulates imprinting using mechanisms, which are independent from known regulators of imprinting. The complexity of the network of regulations between expressed and silenced alleles of imprinted genes activated in response to parental dosage imbalance does not support simple models derived from the parental conflict hypothesis.
A bright deterministic nanowire single photon source

Silicon-vacancy (SiV) centers in diamond are bright sources of indistinguishable single photons. We report fabrication of nanowires coupled to single SiV by deterministic ion implantation, yielding greatly enhanced light coupling compared to SiV in bulk. OCIS codes: 220.4241, 350.4238.
K+ channel blocking actions of flecainide compared with those of propafenone and quinidine in adult rat ventricular myocytes.

The K+ channel blocking action of the class Ic antiarrhythmic agent flecainide was compared with that of propafenone and quinidine in isolated adult rat ventricular myocytes by using the whole-cell patch-clamp technique. In rat ventricular myocytes, depolarization activates both an inactivating (ITO) and a maintained (IK) outward K+ current. Flecainide, propafenone and quinidine all were potent inhibitors of ITO with IC50s of 3.7, 3.3 and 3.9 microM, respectively. Flecainide and quinidine were less potent inhibitors of IK than was propafenone with IC50s of 15 and 14 microM compared with an IC50 of 5 microM for propafenone. By contrast with their effects on outward currents, these agents produced little or no inhibition of the inward rectifier K+ current, even when present at 300 microM. All three agents produced a concentration-dependent increase in the rate of inactivation of ITO but they only produced minor hyperpolarizing shifts (approximately 3 mV) in the voltage dependence of steady-state inactivation. Although propafenone had little effect on the rate of ITO recovery from inactivation (tau CONTROL = 64 +/- 5 ms; tau PROPAFENONE = 84 +/- 9 ms), ITO recovery in the presence of flecainide and quinidine was biexponential; it exhibited an additional slow component (tau FAST = 67 +/- 5 ms and tau SLOW = 2580 +/- 1500 ms for flecainide; tau FAST = 55 +/- 5 ms and tau SLOW = 871 +/- 99 ms for quinidine). Consistent with these observations, flecainide and quinidine, but not propafenone, produced use-dependent block of ITO at a stimulation frequency of 1 Hz. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Efeito da adição de Lactobacillus sp . na ensilagem de cana-de-açúcar 1

This study was aimed to evaluate the effect of microbial additives containing hetero fermentative or homo fermentative bacteria on the characteristics of sugarcane silages. Sugarcane was inoculated with the following bacteria: Lactobacillus plantarum (LP), L. paracasei (LPARA), L. brevis (LBREVIS), L.buchneri (LB), isolated from sugarcane silage, and three commercial inoculants, two of them containing L. buchneri (Pioneer 11A44TM-LBP and Lalsil Cana-LBLC) and one L. plantarum (Biomax®-LPB) and control (without inoculation). All the inoculants were applied in population of 105 log cfu.g-1 of fresh forage. A completely randomized design was used with eight treatments and three replicates. The effect of inoculation on the bromatological characteristics was variable. The silage containing L. plantarum (LPB) showed significantly higher dry matter content (32.6%), while all the others strains studied showed similar effect, with average of 28.4%. The crude protein content ranged from 3.6-4.9% and NDF content ranged from 60-66.7% DM. The ADF, hemicellulose and ash contents were similar for all silages. All treatments used more than 85% of the soluble carbohydrate, which resulted in pH around 3.5. The pH and ammoniacal nitrogen values were acceptable. The inoculants were more effective for the aerobic evaluation of silages, because they slow down temperature and improve the aerobic stability with best results observed in treatments LBLC, LB and LPB.
The more and smaller cells mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana identify novel roles for SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE genes in the control of heteroblasty

Regulation of cell number and cell size is essential for controlling the shape and size of leaves. Here, we report a novel class of Arabidopsis thaliana mutants, more and smaller cells 1 (msc1)-msc3, which have increased cell number and decreased cell size in leaves. msc1 has a miR156-resistant mutation in the SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE 15 (SPL15) gene. msc2 and msc3 are new alleles of paused and squint mutants, respectively. All msc mutants showed accelerated heteroblasty, a phenomenon in which several morphological traits of leaves change along with phase change. Consistent with this finding, in the wild type, leaves at higher nodes (adult leaves) also have increased cell number and reduced cell size compared with those at lower nodes (juvenile leaves). These facts indicate that precocious acquisition of adult leaf characteristics in the msc mutants may cause alterations in the number and size of cells, and that heteroblasty plays an important role in the regulation of cell number and size. In agreement with this suggestion, such heteroblasty-associated changes in cell number and size are severely inhibited by the constitutive overexpression of miR156 and are promoted by the elevated expression of miR156-insensitive forms of SPL genes. By contrast, rdr6, sgs3, zip, arf3 and arf4 mutations, which affect progression of heteroblasty, had little or no effect on number or size of cells. These results suggest that cell number and size are mainly regulated by an SPL-dependent pathway rather than by a tasiR-ARF-dependent pathway.
A Design Space for Electrical Muscle Stimulation Feedback for FreeHand Interaction

Copyright is held by the authors. AA 2014 , April 27, 2014, Toronto, Canada. Abstract Free-hand interaction becomes a common technique for interacting with large displays. At the same time, providing haptic feedback for free-hand interaction is still a challenge, particularly feedback with different characteristics (i.e., strengths, patterns) to convey particular information. We see electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) as a well-suited technology for providing haptic feedback in this domain. The characteristics of EMS can be used to assist users in learning, manipulating, and perceiving virtual objects. One of the core challenges is to understand these characteristics and how they can be applied. As a step in this direction, this paper presents a design space that identifies different aspects of using EMS for haptic feedback. The design space is meant as a basis for future research investigating how particular characteristics can be exploited to provide specific haptic feedback.
A general approach to multi-item capacitated dynamic lot-sizing problems

In this paper, we solve the multi-item capacitated dynamic lot-sizing problems, where each item faces a series of dynamic demand and in each period, multiple items share limited production resources. The objective is to find the optimal production plan so as to minimize the total cost, including production cost, inventory holding cost, and fixed setup cost. We consider both single-level and multi-level cases; in the multi-level case, some items are consumed in order to produce some other items and therefore, items face internally generated demands in addition to external demands. We propose a simple two-stage approach, which is applicable to both classes of problems. Extensive experiments show that the approach gives very good performance compared with the existing methods. We then provide an analysis on how the superior performance is achieved. Besides its performance, one appealing feature of our method is its simplicity and general applicability.
PARENTAL BONDING TOWARDS CHILDREN AND ITS AFFECT ON CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-EFFICACY

The study intended to study the relationship between parental bonding and its effect on children’s self-esteem and self-efficacy in both girls and boys. To conduct the study a sample of 100 boys and 100 girls from different schools through convenience sampling. The Parental Bonding Scale, Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale and General Self Efficacy scale were used in the research. This research highlights the impact of parental bonding on the self-esteem and self-efficacy of children. It shows that there exists significant effect of parental bonding on self-efficacy, but it does not have a significant effect on self-esteem. Boys reported slightly higher self-esteem than girls, but there is no difference between boys and girls on self-efficacy. Our research also reported that boys have a slightly higher parental bonding than females. Among the demographic variables, family structure was found to be non-significant to predict self-esteem and self-efficacy. The study also confirms that parental bonding is significantly related to age. These findings confirmed the need of considering multidimensional aspects of parental bonding and the different perspective in explaining the parental impacts on children self-efficacy and self-esteem.
Zestimate Bazinga : Predicting Selling Price for Condos in Downtown Vancouver

• Problem Statement: Build a model to predict the selling price of a condo based on 48 features pulled or derived from a dataset of downtown Vancouver condo listings under $2.5M between 2016 and 2018. • Data: Pulled from an official database that contains all real estate listings in Canada, with the help of a local real estate agent: § Contains approximately 10,000 condo listings § Contains structured data (ex: square footage) § Contains semi-structured data (ex: address) § Contains unstructured data (ex: "has view? ") Research Overview
Fair Learning in Markovian Environments

We initiate the study of fair learning in Markovian settings, where the actions of a learning algorithm may affect its environment and future rewards. Working in the model of reinforcement learning, we define a fairness constraint requiring that an algorithm never prefers one action over another if the long-term (discounted) reward of choosing the latter action is higher. Our first result is negative: despite the fact that fairness is consistent with the optimal policy, any learning algorithm satisfying fairness must take exponentially many rounds in the number of states to achieve non-trivial approximation to the optimal policy. Our main result is a polynomial time algorithm that is provably fair under an approximate notion of fairness, thus establishing an exponential gap between exact and approximate fairness.
Willingness-to-Pay for Calf Health Programs and Certification Agents

Cattle feeders want feeder cattle that have been weaned and preconditioned with a certified health program. Preconditioned calves perform more efficiently in the feedlot with lower morbidity and mortality. Health program claims, however, range from no claim to being USDA-certified. The value of health protocol certification may vary with certifying entity. Results from a choice experiment and survey of cattle feeders indicate preconditioning programs that include weaning, vaccinating against respiratory and clostridial/blackleg, and treating for parasites are worth on average $7.28/cwt to feedlots. Furthermore, a health program certified by USDA carries an additional value of $2.37/cwt on average.
Pathophysiology of early onset schizophrenia

Early onset schizophrenia (with onset before adulthood) represents a rarer and possibly more severe form of the disorder which has received particular attention in the last two decades. Current evidence strongly suggest continuity with adult onset schizophrenia, with phenomenological, cognitive, genetic and neuroimaging data pointing towards similar neurobiological correlates and clinical deficits but worse long term outcome. Future research in early onset cases is likely to increase further our insight into the neurodevelopmental origins of schizophrenia and the complex gene-environment interactions affecting its emergence.
Apg2 Is a Novel Protein Required for the Cytoplasm to Vacuole Targeting, Autophagy, and Pexophagy Pathways*

To survive starvation conditions, eukaryotes have developed an evolutionarily conserved process, termed autophagy, by which the vacuole/lysosome mediates the turnover and recycling of non-essential intracellular material for re-use in critical biosynthetic reactions. Morphological and biochemical studies inSaccharomyces cerevisiae have elucidated the basic steps and mechanisms of the autophagy pathway. Although it is a degradative process, autophagy shows substantial overlap with the biosynthetic cytoplasm to vacuole targeting (Cvt) pathway that delivers resident hydrolases to the vacuole. Recent molecular genetics analyses of mutants defective in autophagy and the Cvt pathway,apg, aut, and cvt, have begun to identify the protein machinery and provide a molecular resolution of the sequestration and import mechanism that are characteristic of these pathways. In this study, we have identified a novel protein, termed Apg2, required for both the Cvt and autophagy pathways as well as the specific degradation of peroxisomes. Apg2 is required for the formation and/or completion of cytosolic sequestering vesicles that are needed for vacuolar import through both the Cvt pathway and autophagy. Biochemical studies revealed that Apg2 is a peripheral membrane protein. Apg2 localizes to the previously identified perivacuolar compartment that contains Apg9, the only characterized integral membrane protein that is required for autophagosome/Cvt vesicle formation.
Title Noninvasive tracking of donor cell homing by near-infraredfluorescence imaging shortly after bone marrow transplantation

Background: Many diseases associated with bone marrow transplantation (BMT) are caused by transplanted hematopoietic cells, and the onset of these diseases occurs after homing of donor cells in the initial phase after BMT. Noninvasive observation of donor cell homing shortly after transplantation is potentially valuable for improving therapeutic outcomes of BMT by diagnosing the early stages of these diseases. Methodology/Principal Findings: Freshly harvested near-infrared fluorescence-labeled cells were noninvasively observed for 24 h after BMT using a photon counting device to track their homing process. In a congenic BMT model, the homing of Alexa Fluor 750-labeled donor cells in the tibia was detected less than 1 h after BMT. In addition, subsequent cell distribution in an intraBM BMT model was successfully monitored for the first time using this method. In the allogeneic BMT model, T-cell depletion decreased the near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) signals of the reticuloendothelial system. Conclusions/Significance: This approach in several murine BMT models revealed that the transplanted cells homed within 24 h after transplantation. NIRF labeling is useful for tracking transplanted cells in the initial phase after BMT, and this approach can contribute to in vivo studies aimed at improving the therapeutic outcomes of BMT. Citation: Ushiki T, Kizaka-Kondoh S, Ashihara E, Tanaka S, Masuko M, et al. (2010) Noninvasive Tracking of Donor Cell Homing by Near-Infrared Fluorescence Imaging Shortly after Bone Marrow Transplantation. PLoS ONE 5(6): e11114. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0011114 Editor: Joshua Z. Rappoport, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom Received March 17, 2010; Accepted May 24, 2010; Published June 14, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Ushiki et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas, Cancer, from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (http://www.mext.go.jp/english/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: skondoh@kuhp.kyoto-u.ac. jp ¤ Current address: Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Tokyo, Japan
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: Despite evidence to the contrary, the American Economic Review concluded that all was well with its archive

Abstract In 2011, the Annual Report of the Editor of the American Economic Review reported that the journal’s data-code archive was functioning well, and no changes were made to the archive rules. This was based on an audit of the archive that the Editor had commissioned. In point of fact, all was not well with the archive: the archive did not support the publication of reproducible research. The rules for the archive should have been changed and were not; thus the American Economic Review continued to publish articles that were not reproducible. The cause of reproducible research was set back many years. Currently it appears that the AER intends to reproduce articles prior to publication; this would be a horrible mistake.