A Graph-structured Dataset for Wikipedia Research

Wikipedia is a rich and invaluable source of information. Its central place on the Web makes it a particularly interesting object of study for scientists. Researchers from different domains used various complex datasets related to Wikipedia to study language, social behavior, knowledge organization, and network theory. While being a scientific treasure, the large size of the dataset hinders pre-processing and may be a challenging obstacle for potential new studies. This issue is particularly acute in scientific domains where researchers may not be technically and data processing savvy. On one hand, the size of Wikipedia dumps is large. It makes the parsing and extraction of relevant information cumbersome. On the other hand, the API is straightforward to use but restricted to a relatively small number of requests. The middle ground is at the mesoscopic scale when researchers need a subset of Wikipedia ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages but there exists no efficient solution at this scale. In this work, we propose an efficient data structure to make requests and access subnetworks of Wikipedia pages and categories. We provide convenient tools for accessing and filtering viewership statistics or "pagecounts" of Wikipedia web pages. The dataset organization leverages principles of graph databases that allows rapid and intuitive access to subgraphs of Wikipedia articles and categories. The dataset and deployment guidelines are available on the LTS2 website \url{https://lts2.epfl.ch/Datasets/Wikipedia/}

On bias in social reviews of university courses

University course ranking forums are a popular means of disseminating information about satisfaction with the quality of course content and instruction, especially with undergraduate students. A variety of policy decisions by university administrators, instructional designers and teaching staff affect how students perceive the efficacy of pedagogies employed in a given course, in class and online. While there is a large body of research on qualitative driving factors behind the use of academic rating sites, there is little investigation of the (potential) implicit student bias on said forums towards desirable course outcomes at the institution level. To that end, we examine the connection between course outcomes (student-reported GPA) and the overall ranking of the primary course instructor, as well as rating disparity by nature of course outcomes, for several hundred courses taught at Virginia Tech based on data collected from a popular academic rating forum. We also replicate our analysis for several public universities across the US. Our experiments indicate that there is a discernible albeit complex bias towards course outcomes in the professor ratings registered by students.Comment: WebSci'19 Companion Proceeding

The flow of power law fluids in elastic networks and porous media

The flow of power law fluids, which include shear thinning and shear thickening as well as Newtonian as a special case, in networks of interconnected elastic tubes is investigated using a residual based pore scale network modeling method with the employment of newly derived formulae. Two relations describing the mechanical interaction between the local pressure and local cross sectional area in distensible tubes of elastic nature are considered in the derivation of these formulae. The model can be used to describe shear dependent flows of mainly viscous nature. The behavior of the proposed model is vindicated by several tests in a number of special and limiting cases where the results can be verified quantitatively or qualitatively. The model, which is the first of its kind, incorporates more than one major non-linearity corresponding to the fluid rheology and conduit mechanical properties, that is non-Newtonian effects and tube distensibility. The formulation, implementation and performance indicate that the model enjoys certain advantages over the existing models such as being exact within the restricting assumptions on which the model is based, easy implementation, low computational costs, reliability and smooth convergence. The proposed model can therefore be used as an alternative to the existing Newtonian distensible models; moreover it stretches the capabilities of the existing modeling approaches to reach non-Newtonian rheologies.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

The Flow of Power-Law Fluids in Axisymmetric Corrugated Tubes

In this article we present an analytical method for deriving the relationship between the pressure drop and flow rate in laminar flow regimes, and apply it to the flow of power-law fluids through axially-symmetric corrugated tubes. The method, which is general with regards to fluid and tube shape within certain restrictions, can also be used as a foundation for numerical integration where analytical expressions are hard to obtain due to mathematical or practical complexities. Five converging-diverging geometries are used as examples to illustrate the application of this method.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Life in a clinical diploma course

This paper focuses on the author’s experience of a Clinical Diploma programme. The author is a Maori woman who is in her second year of a three year post-graduate Clinical Diploma programme. The paper includes comment on the cultural focus of content, culture conflicts and areas where the programme might be improved for Maori students

Reply to "Comment on Sochi's variational method for generalised Newtonian flow" by Pritchard and Corson

In this article we challenge the claim that the previously proposed variational method to obtain flow solutions for generalized Newtonian fluids in circular tubes and plane slits is exact only for power law fluids. We also defend the theoretical foundation and formalism of the method which is based on minimizing the total stress through the application of the Euler-Lagrange principle.Comment: 9 page

How do people with multiple long-term health conditions experience the self-management approach to health care? : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The health system in New Zealand has devised approaches intended to meet the needs of people with long-term conditions (LTCs) based on the international theories of the Chronic Care Model (CCM) and a self-management framework (Bodenheimer, Wagner, & Grumbach, 2002b; Lorig, 1993; Wagner, 1998). LTCs and multimorbidity are socially patterned so often people with several LTCs are also contending with chaotic lives as well as the implications of their Illnesses. The self-management framework is based on the assumption that everyone has the agency or freewill to make the daily decisions that would benefit their health and ignores the powerful effect of social context. Because the behaviours recommended to optimise health are so entwined with a person’s social context, LTCs are particularly sensitive to the social determinants of health. This multiple case study follows the complex lives of sixteen people with several significant long-term health conditions using the theories of both Cockerham (2005, 2010, 2013b) and Link and Phelan (1995, 2010) to explore their experiences. Ongoing contact with the patient-participants comprised two interviews, four-weekly contacts and interviews with their primary health care clinicians. The patient-participants’ stories reveal complex, entangled lives marked by loss, poverty and daily challenges. They are significantly constrained by the overwhelming social contexts of their lives and reduced to survival mode by their cumulative losses across the four domains of the Whare Tapa Wha model. Personal agency is neither a choice nor readily achieved. They are left too exhausted to work their way through a health system that does not recognise their needs, empower them or compensate for their lack of energy. The weary patient-participants in this study bear little resemblance to the idealised expert patient of the self-management framework. Clinicians are left manoeuvring to compassionately and pragmatically support the patient-participants as best they can within an unhelpful system. The findings however do surface examples of care that are valued by both patient- and clinician-participants that sit outside the self-management approach. These valued aspects are explored alongside the harm reduction, recovery and palliative models of care. These all offer contributions towards an approach that would optimise the quality of life for people with significant, multiple LTCs. An exploration of this re-awakened approach to care is described. Care that is constricted self-management approach could wrap around the patient and support them to use their residual agency in a direction of their choosing. Clinicians would be released from their current programmed response be able to more fully utilise their clinical expertise. Clinicians and patients would have the freedom to be more pragmatic around quality of life and the issues that matter to the individual with LTCs