Emotions and Digital Well-being. The rationalistic bias of social media design in online deliberations

In this chapter we argue that emotions are mediated in an incomplete way in online social media because of the heavy reliance on textual messages which fosters a rationalistic bias and an inclination towards less nuanced emotional expressions. This incompleteness can happen either by obscuring emotions, showing less than the original intensity, misinterpreting emotions, or eliciting emotions without feedback and context. Online interactions and deliberations tend to contribute rather than overcome stalemates and informational bubbles, partially due to prevalence of anti-social emotions. It is tempting to see emotions as being the cause of the problem of online verbal aggression and bullying. However, we argue that social media are actually designed in a predominantly rationalistic way, because of the reliance on text-based communication, thereby filtering out social emotions and leaving space for easily expressed antisocial emotions. Based on research on emotions that sees these as key ingredients to moral interaction and deliberation, as well as on research on text-based versus non-verbal communication, we propose a richer understanding of emotions, requiring different designs of online deliberation platforms. We propose that such designs should move from text-centred designs and should find ways to incorporate the complete expression of the full range of human emotions so that these can play a constructive role in online deliberations

Distances from the Correlation between Galaxy Luminosities and Rotation Rates

A large luminosity--linewidth template sample is now available, improved absorption corrections have been derived, and there are a statistically significant number of galaxies with well determined distances to supply the zero point. A revised estimate of the Hubble Constant is H_0=77 +-4 km/s/Mpc where the error is the 95% probability statistical error. Systematic uncertainties are potentially twice as large.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. Invited chapter for the book `Post-Hipparcos Cosmic Candles', Eds. F. Caputo and A. Heck (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht

Video enhancement using adaptive spatio-temporal connective filter and piecewise mapping

This paper presents a novel video enhancement system based on an adaptive spatio-temporal connective (ASTC) noise filter and an adaptive piecewise mapping function (APMF). For ill-exposed videos or those with much noise, we first introduce a novel local image statistic to identify impulse noise pixels, and then incorporate it into the classical bilateral filter to form ASTC, aiming to reduce the mixture of the most two common types of noises - Gaussian and impulse noises in spatial and temporal directions. After noise removal, we enhance the video contrast with APMF based on the statistical information of frame segmentation results. The experiment results demonstrate that, for diverse low-quality videos corrupted by mixed noise, underexposure, overexposure, or any mixture of the above, the proposed system can automatically produce satisfactory results

The Effect of Transposable Element Insertions on Gene Expression Evolution in Rodents

Background:Many genomes contain a substantial number of transposable elements (TEs), a few of which are known to be involved in regulating gene expression. However, recent observations suggest that TEs may have played a very important role in the evolution of gene expression because many conserved non-genic sequences, some of which are know to be involved in gene regulation, resemble TEs. Results:Here we investigate whether new TE insertions affect gene expression profiles by testing whether gene expression divergence between mouse and rat is correlated to the numbers of new transposable elements inserted near genes. We show that expression divergence is significantly correlated to the number of new LTR and SINE elements, but not to the numbers of LINEs. We also show that expression divergence is not significantly correlated to the numbers of ancestral TEs in most cases, which suggests that the correlations between expression divergence and the numbers of new TEs are causal in nature. We quantify the effect and estimate that TE insertion has accounted for ~20% (95% confidence interval: 12% to 26%) of all expression profile divergence in rodents. Conclusions:We conclude that TE insertions may have had a major impact on the evolution of gene expression levels in rodents

Mining compact predictive pattern sets using classification model

In this paper, we develop a new framework for mining predictive patterns that aims to describe compactly the condition (or class) of interest. Our framework relies on a classification model that considers and combines various predictive pattern candidates and selects only those that are important for improving the overall class prediction performance. We test our approach on data derived from MIMIC-III EHR database, focusing on patterns predictive of sepsis. We show that using our classification approach we can achieve a significant reduction in the number of extracted patterns compared to the state-of-the-art methods based on minimum predictive pattern mining approach, while preserving the overall classification accuracy of the model

Impaired decisional impulsivity in pathological videogamers

Abstract Background Pathological gaming is an emerging and poorly understood problem. Impulsivity is commonly impaired in disorders of behavioural and substance addiction, hence we sought to systematically investigate the different subtypes of decisional and motor impulsivity in a well-defined pathological gaming cohort. Methods Fifty-two pathological gaming subjects and age-, gender- and IQ-matched healthy volunteers were tested on decisional impulsivity (Information Sampling Task testing reflection impulsivity and delay discounting questionnaire testing impulsive choice), and motor impulsivity (Stop Signal Task testing motor response inhibition, and the premature responding task). We used stringent diagnostic criteria highlighting functional impairment. Results In the Information Sampling Task, pathological gaming participants sampled less evidence prior to making a decision and scored fewer points compared with healthy volunteers. Gaming severity was also negatively correlated with evidence gathered and positively correlated with sampling error and points acquired. In the delay discounting task, pathological gamers made more impulsive choices, preferring smaller immediate over larger delayed rewards. Pathological gamers made more premature responses related to comorbid nicotine use. Greater number of hours played also correlated with a Motivational Index. Greater frequency of role playing games was associated with impaired motor response inhibition and strategy games with faster Go reaction time. Conclusions We show that pathological gaming is associated with impaired decisional impulsivity with negative consequences in task performance. Decisional impulsivity may be a potential target in therapeutic management

Old Stellar Populations in Nearby Dwarf Galaxies

What can we learn from the somewhat arduous study of old stellar populations in nearby galaxies? Unless the nearby universe is subtly anomalous, it should contain a relatively normal selection of galaxies whose histories are representative of field galaxies in general throughout the Universe. We can therefore take advantage of our ability to resolve local galaxies into individual stars to directly, and accurately, measure star formation histories. The star formation histories are determined from numerical models, based on stellar evolution tracks, of colour-magnitude diagrams. The most accurate information on star formation rates extending back to the earliest epoches can be obtained from the structure of the main sequence. However, the oldest main sequence turnoffs are very faint, and it is often necessary to use the brighter, more evolved, populations to infer the star formation history at older times. A complete star formation history can be compared with the spectroscopic properties of galaxies seen over a large range of lookback times in redshift surveys. There is considerable evidence that the faint blue galaxies seen in large numbers in cosmological surveys are the progenitors of the late-type irregular galaxies seen in copious numbers in the Local Group, and beyond. We consider how the ``Madau-diagram'', the star formation history of the Universe, would look if the Local Group were to be considered representative of the Universe as a whole

No observed effect of homologous recombination on influenza C virus evolution

The occurrence of homologous recombination in influenza viruses has been under some debate recently. To determine the extent of homologous recombination in influenza C virus, recombination analyses of all available gene sequences of influenza C virus were carried out. No recombination signal was found. With the previous evidence in influenza A and B viruses, it seems that homologous recombination has minimal or no effect on influenza virus evolution

Fast synthesis of platinum nanopetals and nanospheres for highly-sensitive non-enzymatic detection of glucose and selective sensing of ions

Novel methods to obtain Pt nanostructured electrodes have raised particular interest due to their high performance in electrochemistry. Several nanostructuration methods proposed in the literature use costly and bulky equipment or are time-consuming due to the numerous steps they involve. Here, Pt nanostructures were produced for the first time by one-step template-free electrodeposition on Pt bare electrodes. The change in size and shape of the nanostructures is proven to be dependent on the deposition parameters and on the ratio between sulphuric acid and chloride-complexes (i.e., hexachloroplatinate or tetrachloroplatinate). To further improve the electrochemical properties of electrodes, depositions of Pt nanostructures on previously synthesised Pt nanostructures are also performed. The electroactive surface areas exhibit a two order of magnitude improvement when Pt nanostructures with the smallest size are used. All the biosensors based on Pt nanostructures and immobilised glucose oxidase display higher sensitivity as compared to bare Pt electrodes. Pt nanostructures retained an excellent electrocatalytic activity towards the direct oxidation of glucose. Finally, the nanodeposits were proven to be an excellent solid contact for ion measurements, significantly improving the time-stability of the potential. The use of these new nanostructured coatings in electrochemical sensors opens new perspectives for multipanel monitoring of human metabolism

Generation and quality control of lipidomics data for the alzheimers disease neuroimaging initiative cohort.

Alzheimers disease (AD) is a major public health priority with a large socioeconomic burden and complex etiology. The Alzheimer Disease Metabolomics Consortium (ADMC) and the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) aim to gain new biological insights in the disease etiology. We report here an untargeted lipidomics of serum specimens of 806 subjects within the ADNI1 cohort (188 AD, 392 mild cognitive impairment and 226 cognitively normal subjects) along with 83 quality control samples. Lipids were detected and measured using an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography quadruple/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF MS) instrument operated in both negative and positive electrospray ionization modes. The dataset includes a total 513 unique lipid species out of which 341 are known lipids. For over 95% of the detected lipids, a relative standard deviation of better than 20% was achieved in the quality control samples, indicating high technical reproducibility. Association modeling of this dataset and available clinical, metabolomics and drug-use data will provide novel insights into the AD etiology. These datasets are available at the ADNI repository at http://adni.loni.usc.edu/