2,487 research outputs found
How Polarized Have We Become? A Multimodal Classification of Trump Followers and Clinton Followers
Polarization in American politics has been extensively documented and
analyzed for decades, and the phenomenon became all the more apparent during
the 2016 presidential election, where Trump and Clinton depicted two radically
different pictures of America. Inspired by this gaping polarization and the
extensive utilization of Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign, in this
paper we take the first step in measuring polarization in social media and we
attempt to predict individuals' Twitter following behavior through analyzing
ones' everyday tweets, profile images and posted pictures. As such, we treat
polarization as a classification problem and study to what extent Trump
followers and Clinton followers on Twitter can be distinguished, which in turn
serves as a metric of polarization in general. We apply LSTM to processing
tweet features and we extract visual features using the VGG neural network.
Integrating these two sets of features boosts the overall performance. We are
able to achieve an accuracy of 69%, suggesting that the high degree of
polarization recorded in the literature has started to manifest itself in
social media as well.Comment: 16 pages, SocInfo 2017, 9th International Conference on Social
Informatic
Phylogeographic structure of common sage (Salvia officinalis L.) reveals microrefugia throughout the Balkans and colonizations of the Apennines
Studying the population-genetic and phylogeographic structures of a representative species of a particular geographical region can not only provide us with information regarding its evolutionary history, but also improve our understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying the patterns of species diversity in that area. By analysing eight highly polymorphic microsatellite loci and two chloroplast DNA regions, we have investigated the influence of Pleistocene climate fluctuations on the evolutionary history of Salvia officinalis L. (common sage). The populations with the highest genetic diversity were located in the central parts of the Balkan distribution range. A large group of closely related haplotypes was distributed throughout the Balkans and the central Apennines, while the private lineage occupied the southern Apennines. In addition, two highly differentiated lineages were scattered only over the Balkans. The results suggest that a single refugium of the studied species from the last glacial period was located in the central part of the range in the Balkans. Numerous microrefugia, probably spanning several glaciation cycles, were scattered across the Balkans, while colonisation of the Apennines from the Balkans occurred at least on two occasions
Qualitative Properties of the Dirac Equation in a Central Potential
The Dirac equation for a massive spin-1/2 field in a central potential V in
three dimensions is studied without fixing a priori the functional form of V.
The second-order equations for the radial parts of the spinor wave function are
shown to involve a squared Dirac operator for the free case, whose essential
self-adjointness is proved by using the Weyl limit point-limit circle
criterion, and a `perturbation' resulting from the potential. One then finds
that a potential of Coulomb type in the Dirac equation leads to a potential
term in the above second-order equations which is not even infinitesimally
form-bounded with respect to the free operator. Moreover, the conditions
ensuring essential self-adjointness of the second-order operators in the
interacting case are changed with respect to the free case, i.e. they are
expressed by a majorization involving the parameter in the Coulomb potential
and the angular momentum quantum number. The same methods are applied to the
analysis of coupled eigenvalue equations when the anomalous magnetic moment of
the electron is not neglected.Comment: 22 pages, plain Tex. In the final version, a section has been added,
and the presentation has been improve
Hamiltonian study of the Generalized scalar-tensor theory with potential in a Bianchi type I model
We study the generalized scalar tensor theory with a potential in the Bianchi
type I model by using the ADM formalism. We examine the conditions for the
Universe to be in expansion, isotropic and with a positive potential at late
time in the Brans-Dicke and Einstein frames. In particular, we analyse the two
important cases where metric functions tend, in an asymptotic way, toward power
or exponential laws in the Einstein frame.Comment: 15 page
UVB radiation induced effects on cells studied by FTIR spectroscopy
We have made a preliminary analysis of the results about the eVects on
tumoral cell line (lymphoid T cell line Jurkat) induced by UVB radiation (dose
of 310 mJ/cm^2) with and without a vegetable mixture. In the present study, we
have used two techniques: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and
flow cytometry. FTIR spectroscopy has the potential to provide the
identiWcation of the vibrational modes of some of the major compounds (lipid,
proteins and nucleic acids) without being invasive in the biomaterials. The
second technique has allowed us to perform measurements of cytotoxicity and to
assess the percentage of apoptosis. We already studied the induction of
apoptotic process in the same cell line by UVB radiation; in particular, we
looked for correspondences and correlations between FTIR spetroscopy and flow
cytometry data finding three highly probable spectroscopic markers of apoptosis
(Pozzi et al. in Radiat Res 168:698-705, 2007). In the present work, the
results have shown significant changes in the absorbance and spectral pattern
in the wavenumber protein and nucleic acids regions after the treatments
Immunopathogenesis of primary biliary cirrhosis: an old wives' tale
Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a cholestatic liver disease characterised by the autoimmune destruction of the small intrahepatic bile ducts. The disease has an unpredictable clinical course, but may progress to fibrosis and cirrhosis. Although medical treatment with urseodeoxycholic acid is largely successful, some patients may progress to liver failure requiring liver transplantation. PBC is characterised by the presence of disease specific anti-mitochondrial (AMA) antibodies, which are pathognomonic for PBC development. The disease demonstrates an overwhelming female preponderance and virtually all women with PBC present in middle age. The reasons for this are unknown; however several environmental and immunological factors may be involved. As the immune systems ages, it become less self tolerant, and mounts a weaker response to pathogens, possibly leading to cross reactivity or molecular mimicry. Some individuals display immunological changes which encourage the development of autoimmune disease. Risk factors implicated in PBC include recurrent urinary tract infection in females, as well as an increased prevalence of reproductive complications. These risk factors may work in concert with and possibly even accelerate, immune system ageing, contributing to PBC development. This review will examine the changes that occur in the immune system with ageing, paying particular attention to those changes which contribute to the development of autoimmune disease with increasing age. The review also discusses risk factors which may account for the increased female predominance of PBC, such as recurrent UTI and oestrogens
Sequence randomness and polymer collapse transitions
Contrary to expectations based on Harris' criterion, chain disorder with
frustration can modify the universality class of scaling at the theta
transition of heteropolymers. This is shown for a model with random two-body
potentials in 2D on the basis of exact enumeration and accurate Monte Carlo
results. When frustration grows beyond a certain finite threshold, the
temperature below which disorder becomes relevant coincides with the theta one
and scaling exponents definitely start deviating from those valid for
homopolymers.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figure
Probing Dark Energy with Supernovae : Bias from the time evolution of the equation of state
Observation of thousands of type Ia supernovae should offer the most direct
approach to probe the dark energy content of the universe. This will be
undertaken by future large ground-based surveys followed by a space mission
(SNAP/JDEM). We address the problem of extracting the cosmological parameters
from the future data in a model independent approach, with minimal assumptions
on the prior knowledge of some parameters. We concentrate on the comparison
between a fiducial model and the fitting function and adress in particular the
effect of neglecting (or not) the time evolution of the equation of state. We
present a quantitative analysis of the bias which can be introduced by the
fitting procedure. Such bias cannot be ignored as soon as the statistical
errors from present data are drastically improved.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Rapid expression of chemokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines in newly hatched chickens infected with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium
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