Spatio-temporal variation of conversational utterances on Twitter

Conversations reflect the existing norms of a language. Previously, we found that utterance lengths in English fictional conversations in books and movies have shortened over a period of 200 years. In this work, we show that this shortening occurs even for a brief period of 3 years (September 2009-December 2012) using 229 million utterances from Twitter. Furthermore, the subset of geographically-tagged tweets from the United States show an inverse proportion between utterance lengths and the state-level percentage of the Black population. We argue that shortening of utterances can be explained by the increasing usage of jargon including coined words.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, published in PLoS On

Crowding effects in vehicular traffic

While the impact of crowding on the diffusive transport of molecules within a cell is widely studied in biology, it has thus far been neglected in traffic systems where bulk behavior is the main concern. Here, we study the effects of crowding due to car density and driving fluctuations on the transport of vehicles. Using a microscopic model for traffic, we found that crowding can push car movement from a superballistic down to a subdiffusive state. The transition is also associated with a change in the shape of the probability distribution of positions from negatively-skewed normal to an exponential distribution. Moreover, crowding broadens the distribution of cars' trap times and cluster sizes. At steady state, the subdiffusive state persists only when there is a large variability in car speeds. We further relate our work to prior findings from random walk models of transport in cellular systems.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in PLoS ON

The development of online checklist system for traffic impact assessment (e.C-TIA) report submission in Malaysia

Rapid urbanisation and development lead to expansion of roads and accelerated land use demand causing congestion, accidents, pollution and other transportation-related problems. Traffic Impact Assessment is introduced and conducted to assess and mitigate traffic impacts generated from the proposed development and improve road safety. The reports provide the authorities, developers and consultants the framework in making critical land use and site planning decisions regarding traffic and transportation issues. However, the different reporting standard due to different level of knowledge and experience of stakeholders, institutionalisation of the practice as well as lack of cooperation cause fragmentation in the standard TIA report submission. Besides, there is no online system in Malaysia to assist the stakeholders. Hence, this research aims to develop an online checklist system as a standard platform to manage and monitor the TIA reports more effectively and efficiently. This developed system is verified by test case using information systems success model and validated using Delphi method for users’ satisfaction. This system enables consistency in fulfilling the requirements for TIA report based on guidelines by developers or consultants with standardised checklist and workflow and allows the authority who check multiple reports from different projects within 14 days. This research found that the system is useful as a managing tool for the coordination, collaboration and communication among stakeholders in reviewing, submitting, monitoring and updating the TIA report submission. Finally, the invited expert panel that evaluated the system was satisfied with the functionality of the design and flow of the system and 80% of them agreed that the system could be implemented in practice

Efficacy of momordica charantia (bitter melon) supplementation among primary knee osteoarthritis patients : a single-blinded, randomized controlled trial

Introduction: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common problem affecting the joints in the elderly, and its conservative treatment includes the usage of analgesia, which frequently leads to undesirable side effects. Traditionally, Momordica charantia (MC) or bitter melon is believed to be effective in relieving pain, including that caused by knee osteoarthritis. Objective: To determine the effects of MC in reducing pain among primary knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients. Methodology: This study involves 75 patients with primary knee osteoarthritis, who were divided into two groups (thirty-eight patients in the MC group and thirty-seven in the placebo group). The patients underwent 3 months daily supplementation of either MC or placebo. Rescue analgesia was allowed as needed, and rescue analgesia intake was recorded. Pain and symptoms during supplementation period were assessed monthly using Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) and EQ-5D-3L (EuroQol- 5 Dimensions- 3 Levels) Health questionnaire. Comparison and analysis between the two groups were done using “repeated measures ANOVA” to determine the changes in KOOS, EQ-5D-3L and analgesic scores after supplementation. Results: After 3 months supplementation period, there were significant improvements in KOOS subscale and EQ-5D-3L score with a reduction in analgesic score. Body weight, BMI and FBS reduced significantly in the MC group. The placebo group had also shown significant improvements in certain KOOS subscale and EQ-5D-3L dimension score, but with increased of analgesic score. Conclusion: Momordica charantia supplementation offers a safe alternative in reducing pain among the primary knee OA patients, while reducing the need for analgesia consumption. These beneficial effects can be seen as early as 3 months of supplementation

Cholangiocarcioma in a cat

A 7-year-old, intact female Domestic Shorthair cat was referred to University Veterinary Hospital (UVH), UPM for diagnostic workup of a hepatomegaly observed on abdominal radiographs. Physical examination revealed no significant findings except for a distended abdomen. Hematology and serum biochemistry findings included a regenerative anaemia, left shift neutrophilia and a 10-fold elevation in gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT). Abdominal ultrasound revealed heterechoic liver lobes with irregular margins and presence of nodular and cyst-like structures predominantly affecting the left lobes. A mild ascites was also noted. A fine needle aspiration of the liver was performed and cytology results confirmed a cholangiocarcinoma. Generally, the outcome for cholagiocarcinoma is poor and there is limited information regarding the prognosis for patients with cholangiocarcinoma following chemotherapy or surgery

Pedagogical leadership, and conflict of motives in commercial ECEC environments

This chapter applies Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) in order to explore the complexities of pedagogical leadership within Singapore’s commercialised early childhood education and care ECEC environment, an environment which in Singapore’s early childhood care and education sector is in its nascent phases of development as it moves towards becoming a knowledge-based profession. The authors present findings from a study of principals and directors of early childhood settings who consider ways in which pedagogical leadership could be enacted within a marketised educational system. The study reveals that pedagogical concerns should be central to an educational leader’s work, but oftentimes, leaders are pulled in many different directions towards managerial and administrative tasks. There appears to be a struggle between two conflicting motives: engaging in pedagogical work and/or performing administrative tasks.Peer reviewe

Cosmological Information in Weak Lensing Peaks

Recent studies have shown that the number counts of convergence peaks N(kappa) in weak lensing (WL) maps, expected from large forthcoming surveys, can be a useful probe of cosmology. We follow up on this finding, and use a suite of WL convergence maps, obtained from ray-tracing N-body simulations, to study (i) the physical origin of WL peaks with different heights, and (ii) whether the peaks contain information beyond the convergence power spectrum P_ell. In agreement with earlier work, we find that high peaks (with amplitudes >~ 3.5 sigma, where sigma is the r.m.s. of the convergence kappa) are typically dominated by a single massive halo. In contrast, medium-height peaks (~0.5-1.5 sigma) cannot be attributed to a single collapsed dark matter halo, and are instead created by the projection of multiple (typically, 4-8) halos along the line of sight, and by random galaxy shape noise. Nevertheless, these peaks dominate the sensitivity to the cosmological parameters w, sigma_8, and Omega_m. We find that the peak height distribution and its dependence on cosmology differ significantly from predictions in a Gaussian random field. We directly compute the marginalized errors on w, sigma_8, and Omega_m from the N(kappa) + P_ell combination, including redshift tomography with source galaxies at z_s=1 and z_s=2. We find that the N(kappa) + P_ell combination has approximately twice the cosmological sensitivity compared to P_ell alone. These results demonstrate that N(kappa) contains non-Gaussian information complementary to the power spectrum.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures, 14 tables. Accepted for publication in PRD (version before proofs