Sensing Subjective Well-being from Social Media

Subjective Well-being(SWB), which refers to how people experience the quality of their lives, is of great use to public policy-makers as well as economic, sociological research, etc. Traditionally, the measurement of SWB relies on time-consuming and costly self-report questionnaires. Nowadays, people are motivated to share their experiences and feelings on social media, so we propose to sense SWB from the vast user generated data on social media. By utilizing 1785 users' social media data with SWB labels, we train machine learning models that are able to "sense" individual SWB from users' social media. Our model, which attains the state-by-art prediction accuracy, can then be used to identify SWB of large population of social media users in time with very low cost.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figures, 2 tables, 10th International Conference, AMT 2014, Warsaw, Poland, August 11-14, 2014. Proceeding

The Nebraska Tractor Law and Rules for Official Tractor Tests

The Nebraska Tractor Law, which became effective July 15, 1919, was enacted to encourage the manufacture and sale of improved types of tractors and to contribute to a more successful use of the tractor for farming. It was thought that the best method of accomplishing these objects would be to require a tractor of each model sold in the State to be tested at the State University and to have the results of these tests made public

Calculation of The Band Gap Energy and Study of Cross Luminescence in Alkaline-Earth Dihalide Crystals

The band gap energy as well as the possibility of cross luminescence processes in alkaline-earth dihalide crystals have been calculated using the ab initio Perturbed-Ion (PI) model. The gap is calculated in several ways: as a difference between one-electron energy eigenvalues and as a difference between total energies of appropriate electronic states of the crystal, both at the HF level and with inclusion of Coulomb correlation effects. In order to study the possibility of ocurrence of cross luminescence in these materials, the energy difference between the valence band and the upmost core band for some representative crystals has been calculated. Both calculated band gap energies and cross luminescence predictions compare very well with the available experimental results.Comment: LaTeX file containing 8 pages plus 1 postscript figure. Final version accepted for publication in The Journal of the Physical Society of Japan. It contains a more complete list of references, as well as a more detailed comparison with previous theoretical investigations on the subjec

A characteristics framework for Semantic Information Systems Standards

Semantic Information Systems (IS) Standards play a critical role in the development of the networked economy. While their importance is undoubted by all stakeholders—such as businesses, policy makers, researchers, developers—the current state of research leaves a number of questions unaddressed. Terminological confusion exists around the notions of “business semantics”, “business-to-business interoperability”, and “interoperability standards” amongst others. And, moreover, a comprehensive understanding about the characteristics of Semantic IS Standards is missing. The paper addresses this gap in literature by developing a characteristics framework for Semantic IS Standards. Two case studies are used to check the applicability of the framework in a “real-life” context. The framework lays the foundation for future research in an important field of the IS discipline and supports practitioners in their efforts to analyze, compare, and evaluate Semantic IS Standard

Large-scale ozone and aerosol distributions, air mass characteristics, and ozone fluxes over the western Pacific Ocean in late winter/early spring

Large‐scale measurements of ozone (O3) and aerosol distributions were made from the NASA DC‐8 aircraft during the Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE‐P) field experiment conducted in February–April 2001. Remote measurements were made with an airborne lidar to provide O3 and multiple‐wavelength aerosol backscatter profiles from near the surface to above the tropopause along the flight track. In situ measurements of O3, aerosols, and a wide range of trace gases were made onboard the DC‐8. Five‐day backward trajectories were used in conjunction with the O3 and aerosol distributions on each flight to indicate the possible origin of observed air masses, such as from biomass burning regions, continental pollution, desert regions, and oceanic regions. Average latitudinal O3 and aerosol scattering ratio distributions were derived from all flights west of 150°E, and these distributions showed the average latitude and altitude dependence of different dynamical and chemical processes in determining the atmospheric composition over the western Pacific. TRACE‐P (TP) showed an increase in the average latitudinal distributions of both O3 and aerosols compared to PEM‐West B (PWB), which was conducted in February–March 1994. O3, aerosol, and potential vorticity levels were used to identify nine air mass types and quantify their frequency of occurrence as a function of altitude. This paper discusses the characteristics of the different air mass types encountered during TP and compares them to PWB. These results confirmed that most of the O3 increase in TP was due to photochemistry. The average latitudinal eastward O3 flux in the western Pacific during TP was found to peak near 32°N with a total average O3 flux between 14 and 46°N of 5.2 Tg/day. The eastward total CO flux was calculated to be 2.2 Tg‐C/day with ∼6% estimated from Asia. The Asian flux of CO2 and CH4 was estimated at 4.9 and 0.06 Tg‐C/day

In vitro analysis of the cytotoxicity and the antimicrobial effect of four endodontic sealers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>The aim of this study was to investigate <it>in vitro </it>the cytotoxicity and antibacterial properties of four different endodontic sealers using human periodontal ligament fibroblast cell proliferation and visual analysis of growth inhibition.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A silicone (GuttaFlow), silicate (EndoSequence BC), zinc oxide eugenol (Pulp Canal Sealer EWT) and epoxy resin (AH Plus Jet) based sealer were incubated with PDL fibroblasts (10⁴cells/ml, n = 6) up to 96 h. Cell proliferation (RFU) was determined by means of the Alamar Blue assay. Cell growth and morphology was visualized by means of fluorescent dyes. Possible antibacterial properties of the different sealers were visualized by means of SEM (<it>Enterococcus faecalis; Parvimonas micra</it>).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Fibroblast proliferation depended on sealer and cultivation time. After 72 and 96 h GuttaFlow and EndoSequence BC showed relatively non-cytotoxic reactions, while Pulp Canal Sealer EWT and AH Plus Jet caused a significant decrease of cell proliferation (p < 0.001). Visualization of cell growth and morphology with various fluorescent dyes supplemented the results. No antibacterial effect of EndoSequence BC to <it>P. micra </it>was found, whereas GuttaFlow showed a weak, Pulp Canal Sealer EWT and AH Plus Jet extensive growth inhibition. Also, no antibacterial effect of GuttaFlow, EndoSequence BC or AH Plus Jet to <it>E. faecalis </it>could be detected.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These <it>in vitro </it>findings reveal that GuttaFlow and EndoSequence BC can be considered as biocompatible sealing materials. However, prior to their clinical employment, studies regarding their sealing properties also need to be considered.</p

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Effective generation of transgenic pigs and mice by linker based sperm-mediated gene transfer.

BACKGROUND: Transgenic animals have become valuable tools for both research and applied purposes. The current method of gene transfer, microinjection, which is widely used in transgenic mouse production, has only had limited success in producing transgenic animals of larger or higher species. Here, we report a linker based sperm-mediated gene transfer method (LB-SMGT) that greatly improves the production efficiency of large transgenic animals. RESULTS: The linker protein, a monoclonal antibody (mAb C), is reactive to a surface antigen on sperm of all tested species including pig, mouse, chicken, cow, goat, sheep, and human. mAb C is a basic protein that binds to DNA through ionic interaction allowing exogenous DNA to be linked specifically to sperm. After fertilization of the egg, the DNA is shown to be successfully integrated into the genome of viable pig and mouse offspring with germ-line transfer to the F1 generation at a highly efficient rate: 37.5% of pigs and 33% of mice. The integration is demonstrated again by FISH analysis and F2 transmission in pigs. Furthermore, expression of the transgene is demonstrated in 61% (35/57) of transgenic pigs (F0 generation). CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggests that LB-SMGT could be used to generate transgenic animals efficiently in many different species