Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
For Whom to Tweet? Evidence from a Large-Scale Social Media Platform ⇤

We study the e ↵ ects of peer-group sizes on tweeting in a large-scale and inﬂuential social media platform. Tweets in social media disseminate information and exert social inﬂuence. However, 50% of the users post less than 6 tweets per month and contribute to less than 15% of the tweets in stock, while the top 10% post over 40 tweets a month and contribute to more than half of the tweets in stock. We attribute the highly unbalanced contribution to a user’s conﬂicting incentives of free-riding and maximizing social inﬂuence. We exploit the asymmetry of a user’s peer groups (followers and followees, groups of people following and being followed by the user) to disentangle these incentives, and devise empirical strategies to deal with the endogenous network formation. We ﬁnd asymmetric e ↵ ects, in both signs and sizes, of followers and followees. A larger group of followers leads a user to tweet more, while a larger group of followees leads a user to tweet less. As the follower e ↵ ects are dominant, our simulations indicate that by randomly adding 1% new connections the platform could increase the total tweets by 25%. Targeting occasional tweeters is even more e ↵ ective in promoting the activeness of this platform.
Low Cost, Single-ended, 2M Ohm Input Impedance 98dB Stereo Audio A/D Converter With a Novel Front-end Sampling Network

A single-ended multibit delta-sigma stereo audio ADC is presented. A 3rd-order single-loop 10-level feed forward delta-sigma modulator is implemented. A feed forward stage and a rough/fine input sampling scheme combined with a novel front-end sampling network allows wide dynamic range at lower power, smaller die size and larger than 2M ohm input impedance. A second order mismatch shaper removes any nonlinearity or tones caused by element mismatch in the feedback DAC. It achieves 98dB dynamic range and 105dB THD with 0.5k ohm of source impedance while dissipating 60mW@5V. The chip occupies 2-mm2 area in 0.25mum-process and fits into a tiny 10-pin TSSOP package
Analysis on the properties of a coupled planar dipole UWB antenna

A new structure of coupled planar dipole ultra-wide-band antenna is presented. This low-profile design is mainly developed via a multi-band antenna concept plus general coupling equivalent circuit concepts of narrowband antenna analysis. The practical design work and analysis results are performed with Ansoft Design. The reliable full wave simulation analysis shows that this novel structure can easily realize a good linear variation for the sweep gain as well as frequency notched properties within a controllable bandwidth from 3 to 8 GHz.
Preliminary evidence of vertical transmission of Theileria parva sporozoites from ECF immunized cows to offspring in southern Tanzania.

An investigation was conducted in southern Tanzania on East Coast fever (ECF) immunization using Infection and Treatment Method (ITM). Two groups, each with 768 cattle were randomly allocated from study farms. One group was subjected to ITM while the second to acaricide application alone. ECF cases occurrence among study animals and calves born to them were investigated. ECF immunization, treatment records and herd dynamics were investigated from both farmers and livestock personnel in addition to conducting structured interviews. Samples were collected from suspect ECF cases and subjected to microscopy. Retrospectively, 2795 cattle were immunized against ECF in the years 2000 to 2009; whereas, during prospective investigation, 768 cattle were immunized. Questionnaire survey revealed that majority of the respondents 154/156 appreciated the protection conferred to immunized animals. However, a good number of them (135/156) complained that calves born to immunized cows succumb to ECF early in life unlike calves born to non-immunized animals. All interviewed livestock personnel (n=12) reported occurrence of ECF in majority of calves born to ECF vaccinated cows; and that most of the cases were detected in calves below ten days. Livestock personnel further pointed out that the response of such infected calves to treatment was poor. According to them, recovery rates of treated calves born from ECF immunized cows ranged from 21 to 60%. Five hundred and fifteen suspect ECF cases occurred in study groups during this period. Majority of the cases (431/515) were calves born to immunized cows, 247/431 being below ten days of age. Some (320/515) of the suspect cases of ECF were subjected to microscopy following Giemsa staining and 313/320 were confirmed by detection of Koch’s blue bodies (KBBs) in lymph smears. Recovery rate of ECF cases in calves born to ECF immunized cows was 46.6% for those below ten days. The rate however increased with age to 100.0%. ECF calves born to non-immunized cows had a recovery rate ranging from 80.0 to 94.7% with the recovery rate increasing with age. In conclusion, ITM of the live Theileria parva confers a reasonable protection against clinical ECF to cattle. The method, however, results in new born calf losses due to Theileria parva infections originating from immunized cows irrespective of vaccine lot numbers. The vaccine thus needs further verification on its safety to the foetuses and non-immunized animals that are kept together with immunized animals.
Impact of Depression on Quality of Life Results in Patients Following Acute Coronary Syndrome Treated with Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI)

The purpose of study was to evaluate the impact of depressive symptoms on the QoL in patients following acute coronary syndrome treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) at week one of hospitalization and 6 months following ACS. Methods The study population included 140 patients hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome who underwent PCI. Depression was evaluated using the Beck Depression Index, which is a self-scoring test for symptoms and severity of depression composed of 21 questions. QoL was evaluated with the use of the Mac New questionnaire, specifically designed for cardiology patients. The QoL evaluation in all Mac New dimensions in the depressed and not depressed groups was statistically different both at baseline and at 6-month follow up. At baseline and at the 6- month follow-up, the mean Emotional Dimension, Physical Dimension, Social Dimension and evaluation of the General Quality of Life dimension the results were lower in the depressed group compared with the not depressed group. The dynamics of change in QoL at 6 months following PCI was verified using the Wilcoxon test and a statistically significant improvement in quality of life was found in all Mac New dimensions in both groups. However, the dynamics were more beneficial in the depressed group. Depression in ACS patients has a strong negative effect on QoL both in early and late observations. Early depression, on the other hand, is a statistically significant and independent predictor of a lower QoL outcome. As such, diagnosis and treatment of depression in patients hospitalized with ACS should become a therapeutic standard.
Testing the kinetic energy functional: Kinetic energy density as a density functional

A new method for defining an energy density for the noninteracting kinetic energy of density functional theory is given. The resulting energy density is a density functional determined completely by the kinetic energy functional itself. Although this method is not constructive, it allows for a direct comparison between exact and approximate functionals pointwise in space. For simple systems, the new energy density is calculated exactly, and compared with traditional choices, on both formal and physical grounds. Finally, the energy densities of both the gradient expansion and the von Weizsacker approximation are calculated, and compared with the exact quantity. The errors in the von Weizsacker approximation are identified.
A two-axis actively regulated consequent-pole bearingless motor with wide magnetic gaps

A bearingless motor that combines the functions of both non-contact suspension and rotation is practically applied to centrifugal pumps in certain industries in which the contamination of wear particles in a pumping medium must be avoided. In bearingless contamination-free pumps, protective covers must be attached to the rotor and stator surfaces in order to prevent liquid contamination and to provide chemical resistance. These covers should be as thick as possible, for long-term use. Therefore, the magnetic gap between the rotor and the stator should be designed to be wider than that in conventional bearingless motors. However, such a wide magnetic gap may cause a reduction in the suspension force and torque. In this study, a two-axis actively positioned consequent-pole bearingless motor with a wide magnetic gap of 8 mm is investigated using the three-dimensional finite element method analysis. The calculation results show that the proposed structure produces sufficient suspension force and torque under the condition of a wide magnetic gap.
Phantom and in vivo evaluation of sound speed estimation methods: Preliminary results

For medical ultrasound imaging, the dynamic receive beamforming is important for improving image quality, i.e., spatial and contrast resolution. In current dynamic receive beamforming, a constant sound speed (e.g., 1540m/s) is assumed. However, the sound speed dispersed in soft tissues leads to defocusing and degradation of image quality. Various methods have been proposed to estimate the proper sound speed with received data, but these methods have not been verified their performance in clinical cases (e.g., breast tissue). In this paper, the five different sound speed estimation methods (i.e., coherent factor (CF), minimum average phase variance (MAPV), minimum average sum-of-absolute difference (MASAD), focus quality spectra (FQS), and modified nonlinear anisotropic difference (MNAD)) are evaluated with the tissue mimicking phantom and the in vivo breast data under the same condition. The pre-beamformed radio-frequency data (RF) for the tissue mimicking phantom and in vivo breast data are acquired using a 7.5-MHz linear array transducer with the SonixTouch research platform connected to the SonixDAQ parallel data acquisition system. In the phantom study, the five methods show considerable performance in estimating the optimal sound speed (i.e., 1450 ± 25 m/s). The CF and FQS methods also show the low errors in the in vivo breast study, but the MAPV, MASAD and MNAD methods have difficulty in estimating the optimal sound speed (1530 m/s) i.e., 25.0 ± 12.9 and 20.0 ± 8.2 vs. 72.5 ± 45.0, 72.5 ± 41.9, 52.5 ± 28.7, respectively. These results indicated that the CF and FQS methods can robustly estimate the optimal sound speed in the homogenous phantom and heterogeneous soft tissues (e.g., breast).
Effect of drought/irrigation on proximate composition and carbohydrate content of two enset [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] clones

Enset [ Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] is an important root crop serving as a carbohydrate rich food source in Ethiopia. Perennial crops, like enset, are often exposed to recurrent dry periods which could greatly affect their growth, physiology and yield. The effect of induced drought/irrigation on the proximate composition and carbohydrate content of harvestable plant parts (pseudostem and corm) of two field grown enset clones ( Ameratye and Yesherakinkye ) was investigated. Proximate analysis showed that extended drought significantly (P £0.05) reduced crude protein, ash content, potassium and phosphorus contents of enset pseudostem and corm of the two clones. On the other hand, crude fibber content and calcium levels were significantly higher in droughted groups than irrigated ones. There were no significant treatment effects on crude fat content and /or magnesium levels. Moreover, drought resulted in a significant increase in the level of soluble sugars and a decline in starch content of plant parts in both clones. Droughted plants accumulated 2–4 fold more soluble sugars than irrigated groups while the latter group gained 14–23% more starch. There was no significant difference between the two clones for the parameters considered. Low nutrient content of droughted plants could be the result of reduced nutrient uptake and assimilation caused by low soil water content and limited energy source (carbon skeleton). The observed increase in soluble sugars could be an indication of osmotic adjustment mechanisms in droughted enset plants. On the other hand, the decline in starch content could be due to reduced carbon assimilation and/or starch degradation.
The Harder the Task, the Higher the Score: Findings of a Difficulty Bias

type="main" xml:lang="en"> Studies have found that going first or last in a sequential order contest leads to a biased outcome, commonly called order bias (or primacy and recency). Studies have also found that judges have a tendency to reward contestants they recognize with additional points, called reference bias. Controlling for known biases, we test for a new type of bias we refer to as “difficulty bias,” which reveals that athletes attempting more difficult routines receive higher execution scores, even when difficulty and execution are judged separately. Despite some identification challenges, we add to the literature by finding strong evidence of a difficulty bias in gymnastics. We also provide generalizations beyond athletics. (JEL L10, L83, D81, J70, Z1)
Hyperandrogenaemia in adolescent girls: origins of abnormal gonadotropin‐releasing hormone secretion

Polycystic ovarian syndrome is a common disorder characterized by ovulatory dysfunction and hyperandrogenemia (HA). Its origins begin peripubertally, as adolescent HA commonly leads to adult HA and decreased fertility. HA reduces inhibition of gonadotropin releasing hormone pulse frequency by progesterone, causing rapid LH pulse secretion and further increasing ovarian androgen production. Obese girls are at risk for HA and develop increased LH pulse frequency with elevated mean LH by late puberty. Many girls with HA do not exhibit normal LH pulse sensitivity to progesterone inhibition. Thus, HA may adversely affect LH pulse regulation during pubertal maturation leading to persistent HA.
A regression based methodology to estimate SNM for improving yield of 6T SRAM

The stability of SRAM cells in high density ICs during read cycle is an extremely critical performance metric for data retention. A frame work to identify the tradeoff between Yield and Static Noise Margin (SNM) in the region of high sigma tail end distributions is presented in this paper. For developing the framework, the sensitivity of SNM is observed for different device variations using Design of Experiments (DoE) method whereas estimation of yield for different targeted SNMs is done using Bivariate Linear (BL) model and Bivariate Nonlinear Quadratic (BNLQ) models. The developed framework demonstrates that for achieving a yield of 99% there is a need to design a memory cell at a cost of 150mV SNM using BL model post silicon. On the other hand at the same cost of 150mV SNM, the yield can be enhanced to 99.5% if BNLQ model is adopted post silicon.
Simulating Security of Quantum Protocols Under Channel Error Conditions

Security of quantum key exchange depends on successfully detecting the presence of an eavesdropper. In most cases this is done by comparing the errors introduced by an eavesdropper with the channel error rate. In other words, the communicating parties must tolerate some errors without losing a significant amount of key information. In this paper, we characterize the effects of amplitude damping errors on quantum key distribution protocols and explore allowable tolerances. Through simulations we observe that the effect of these errors, in some cases, is highly dependent on where the eavesdropper is located on the channel.
Studies on tissue culture of Chinese medicinal plant resources in Taiwan and their sustainable utilization

Medicinal plants are sources of important therapeutic aid for alleviating human ailments. With increasing realization of the health hazards and toxicity associated with the indiscriminate use of synthetic drugs and antibiotics, interest in the use of plants and plant-based drugs has revived throughout the world. However, a large number of medicinal plants remain to be investigated for their possible pharmacological value. Most of the pharmaceutical in- dustry is highly dependent on wild populations for the supply of raw materials for extraction of medicinally impor- tant compounds. Due to a lack of proper cultivation practices, destruction of plant habitats, and the illegal and indiscriminate collection of plants from these habitats, many medicinal plants are severely threatened. Advanced biotechnological methods of culturing plant cells and tissues should provide new means of conserving and rapidly propagating valuable, rare, and endangered medicinal plants. This paper describes the work carried out at the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute and Chaoyang University of Technology on in vitro propagation of some important medicinal plants.
Knee Osteoarthritis Treated with Percutaneous Chondral-Bone Interface Optimization: A Pilot Trial

Objective: The objective is to evaluate the efficacy of using tibial bone marrow delivered to the chondral-bone interface (CBI) via percutaneous chondral bone interface optimization (PeCaBoo) as a therapy for knee osteoarthritis (OA). Study Design: A series of prospective cases were presented. Participants: Our study included 10 patients with medial or lateral compartment knee OA. Methods: With 1 cc of heparin pre-loaded in the syringe, 5 cc of tibial bone marrow was withdrawn from the proximal tibia. The resultant 6 cc of aspirate in the syringe was injected via PeCaBoo, 2 cc at a time, into the superior CBI and inferior CBI. The remaining 2 cc was injected via needle into the intra-articular joint space. Main Outcome Measurements: Patients had MRIs taken pre-procedure and 3 months post-procedure to measure bone edema and intra-articular matrix thickness. Patient-reported outcomes recorded included the Western Ontario and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) and the Numeric Paint Rating Scale (NRS), which were both obtained pre-procedure and post-procedure at 3, 6, and 12 months. Use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) was recorded pre- and post-procedure as well. Results: Our study included 4 males and 6 females, with an average age of 63.5 years. The average follow-up time was 14 months, with a range of 13 - 15 months. The mean WOMAC score was 58.2 points pre-procedure and 35.3 points post-procedure (p Boo procedure. The subgroup of patients with tibial edema and knee OA had optimal outcomes. Conclusions: Tibial bone marrow stem cell delivered via PeCaBoo is a novel minimally-invasive treatment for knee OA, with potential to repair cartilage and improve knee pain and function.
HMM-Based Voice Separation of MIDI Performance

Voice separation is an important component of Music Information Retrieval (MIR). In this paper, we present an HMM which can be used to separate music performance data in the form of MIDI into monophonic voices. It works on two basic principles: that consecutive notes within a single voice will tend to occur on similar pitches, and that there are short (if any) temporal gaps between them. We also present an incremental algorithm which can perform inference on the model efficiently. We show that our approach achieves a significant improvement over existing approaches, when run on a corpus of 78 compositions by J.S. Bach, each of which has been separated into the gold standard voices suggested by the original score. We also show that it can be used to perform voice separation on live MIDI data without an appreciable loss in accuracy. The code for the model described here is available at https://github.com/apmcleod/voice-splitting.
Sensitivity Analysis in Markov Decision Processes with Uncertain Reward Parameters

Sequential decision problems can often be modeled as Markov decision processes. Classical solution approaches assume that the parameters of the model are known. However, model parameters are usually estimated and uncertain in practice. As a result, managers are often interested in how estimation errors affect the optimal solution. In this paper we illustrate how sensitivity analysis can be performed directly for a Markov decision process with uncertain reward parameters using the Bellman equations. In particular, we consider problems involving (i) a single stationary parameter, (ii) multiple stationary parameters, and (iii) multiple nonstationary parameters. We illustrate the applicability of this work through a capacitated stochastic lot-sizing problem.
On the Comparison of Wearable Sensor Data Fusion to a Single Sensor Machine Learning Technique in Fall Detection

In the context of the ageing global population, researchers and scientists have tried to find solutions to many challenges faced by older people. Falls, the leading cause of injury among elderly, are usually severe enough to require immediate medical attention; thus, their detection is of primary importance. To this effect, many fall detection systems that utilize wearable and ambient sensors have been proposed. In this study, we compare three newly proposed data fusion schemes that have been applied in human activity recognition and fall detection. Furthermore, these algorithms are compared to our recent work regarding fall detection in which only one type of sensor is used. The results show that fusion algorithms differ in their performance, whereas a machine learning strategy should be preferred. In conclusion, the methods presented and the comparison of their performance provide useful insights into the problem of fall detection.
Immunohistochemical characterization of the rabbit tracheal cartilages

The objective of this study was to immunohistochemically elucidate the major extracellular matrix constituents of rabbit tracheal cartilage. The impetus for this project is the need for crucial design and validation criteria for tissue engineering juxtaposed with the conspicuous lack of trachea extracellular matrix data in the literature. Tracheal tissue specimens were harvested from New Zealand White rabbits, and were immunostained for collagen I, collagen II, aggrecan and decorin; and a Verhoeff-Van Gieson stain was performed to visualize elastin. The most striking result was the highly organized relationship between distinct fibrous (containing collagen I, decorin and elastin) and hyaline-like (containing collagen II and aggrecan) regions of the tracheal wall. The tracheal cartilage stained strongly with collagen II throughout, with periodic bands of aggrecan in the tracheal arches, meaning that there were areas void of aggrecan immunostaining alternating with areas with strong aggrecan immunostaining. In contrast, the periphery of the cartilage and the perichondrium itself exhibited strong collagen I staining and no collagen II staining. Elastin fibers and decorin were also detected along the periphery of the cartilage in the perichondrium and corresponded highly with the distribution of collagen I staining. The body of the rabbit trachea is therefore composed of a hyaline-cartilage structure primarily made of collagen II and bands of aggrecan, surrounded by a fibrous region composed of elastin and collagen I, indicative of a flexible tissue with distinct regions of compressive integrity. This information will be a valuable reference to future tissue engineering efforts in the creation of a biosynthetic substitute for laryngotracheal reconstruction.