Search

In the evolving landscape of online communication, moderating hate speech (HS) presents an intricate challenge, compounded by the multimodal nature of digital content. This comprehensive survey delves into the recent strides in HS moderation, spotlighting the burgeoning role of large language models (LLMs) and large multimodal models (LMMs). Our exploration begins with a thorough analysis of current literature, revealing the nuanced interplay between textual, visual, and auditory elements in propagating HS. We uncover a notable trend towards integrating these modalities, primarily due to the complexity and subtlety with which HS is disseminated. A significant emphasis is placed on the advances facilitated by LLMs and LMMs, which have begun to redefine the boundaries of detection and moderation capabilities. We identify existing gaps in research, particularly in the context of underrepresented languages and cultures, and the need for solutions to handle low-resource settings. The survey concludes with a forward-looking perspective, outlining potential avenues for future research, including the exploration of novel AI methodologies, the ethical governance of AI in moderation, and the development of more nuanced, context-aware systems. This comprehensive overview aims to catalyze further research and foster a collaborative effort towards more sophisticated, responsible, and human-centric approaches to HS moderation in the digital era. WARNING: This paper contains offensive examples., Comment: Preprint; Under-Review

To address the limitations of current hate speech detection models, we introduce \textsf{SGHateCheck}, a novel framework designed for the linguistic and cultural context of Singapore and Southeast Asia. It extends the functional testing approach of HateCheck and MHC, employing large language models for translation and paraphrasing into Singapore's main languages, and refining these with native annotators. \textsf{SGHateCheck} reveals critical flaws in state-of-the-art models, highlighting their inadequacy in sensitive content moderation. This work aims to foster the development of more effective hate speech detection tools for diverse linguistic environments, particularly for Singapore and Southeast Asia contexts.

The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is among the few large carnivores that survived the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions. Thanks to their complex history of admixture and extensive geographic range, the number of gray wolf subspecies and their phylogenetic relationships remain poorly understood. Here, we perform whole-genome sequencing of a gray wolf collected from peninsular India that was phenotypically distinct from gray wolves outside India. Genomic analyses reveal that the Indian gray wolf is an evolutionarily distinct lineage that diverged from other extant gray wolf lineages ∼110 thousand years ago. Demographic analyses suggest that the Indian wolf population declined continuously decline since separating from other gray wolves and, today, has exceptionally low genetic diversity. We also find evidence for pervasive and mosaic gene flow between the Indian wolf and African canids including African wolf, Ethiopian wolf, and African wild dog despite their current geographical separation. Our results support the hypothesis that the Indian subcontinent was a Pleistocene refugium and center of diversification and further highlight the complex history of gene flow that characterized the evolution of gray wolves.

The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is among the few large carnivores that survived the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions. Thanks to their complex history of admixture and extensive geographic range, the number of gray wolf subspecies and their phylogenetic relationships remain poorly understood. Here, we perform whole-genome sequencing of a gray wolf collected from peninsular India that was phenotypically distinct from gray wolves outside India. Genomic analyses reveal that the Indian gray wolf is an evolutionarily distinct lineage that diverged from other extant gray wolf lineages ∼110 thousand years ago. Demographic analyses suggest that the Indian wolf population declined continuously decline since separating from other gray wolves and, today, has exceptionally low genetic diversity. We also find evidence for pervasive and mosaic gene flow between the Indian wolf and African canids including African wolf, Ethiopian wolf, and African wild dog despite their current geographical separation. Our results support the hypothesis that the Indian subcontinent was a Pleistocene refugium and center of diversification and further highlight the complex history of gene flow that characterized the evolution of gray wolves.

We reconstruct the phenotype of Balto, the heroic sled dog renowned for transporting diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, using evolutionary constraint estimates from the Zoonomia alignment of 240 mammals and 682 genomes from dogs and wolves of the 21st century. Balto shares just part of his diverse ancestry with the eponymous Siberian husky breed. Balto's genotype predicts a combination of coat features atypical for modern sled dog breeds, and a slightly smaller stature. He had enhanced starch digestion compared with Greenland sled dogs and a compendium of derived homozygous coding variants at constrained positions in genes connected to bone and skin development. We propose that Balto's population of origin, which was less inbred and genetically healthier than that of modern breeds, was adapted to the extreme environment of 1920s Alaska.

Recent reports have revealed that oncolytic viruses (OVs) play a significant role in cancer therapy. The infection of OVs such as oncolytic vaccinia virus (OVV), vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), parvovirus, mammalian reovirus (MRV), human adenovirus, Newcastle disease virus (NDV), herpes simplex virus (HSV), avian reovirus (ARV), Orf virus (ORFV), inactivated Sendai virus (ISV), enterovirus, and coxsackievirus offer unique opportunities in immunotherapy through diverse and dynamic pathways. This mini-review focuses on the mechanisms of OVs-mediated virotherapy and their effects on immunogenic cell death (ICD), apoptosis, autophagy and regulation of the immune system.

We reconstruct the phenotype of Balto, the heroic sled dog renowned for transporting diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, using evolutionary constraint estimates from the Zoonomia alignment of 240 mammals and 682 genomes from dogs and wolves of the 21st century. Balto shares just part of his diverse ancestry with the eponymous Siberian husky breed. Balto's genotype predicts a combination of coat features atypical for modern sled dog breeds, and a slightly smaller stature. He had enhanced starch digestion compared with Greenland sled dogs and a compendium of derived homozygous coding variants at constrained positions in genes connected to bone and skin development. We propose that Balto's population of origin, which was less inbred and genetically healthier than that of modern breeds, was adapted to the extreme environment of 1920s Alaska.

Total Defence is a defence policy combining and extending the concept of military defence and civil defence. While several countries have adopted total defence as their defence policy, very few studies have investigated its effectiveness. With the rapid proliferation of social media and digitalisation, many social studies have been focused on investigating policy effectiveness through specially curated surveys and questionnaires either through digital media or traditional forms. However, such references may not truly reflect the underlying sentiments about the target policies or initiatives of interest. People are more likely to express their sentiment using communication mediums such as starting topic thread on forums or sharing memes on social media. Using Singapore as a case reference, this study aims to address this research gap by proposing TotalDefMeme, a large-scale multi-modal and multi-attribute meme dataset that captures public sentiments toward Singapore's Total Defence policy. Besides supporting social informatics and public policy analysis of the Total Defence policy, TotalDefMeme can also support many downstream multi-modal machine learning tasks, such as aspect-based stance classification and multi-modal meme clustering. We perform baseline machine learning experiments on TotalDefMeme and evaluate its technical validity, and present possible future interdisciplinary research directions and application scenarios using the dataset as a baseline., Comment: 6 pages. Accepted at ACM MMSys 2023

Recent studies have proposed models that yielded promising performance for the hateful meme classification task. Nevertheless, these proposed models do not generate interpretable explanations that uncover the underlying meaning and support the classification output. A major reason for the lack of explainable hateful meme methods is the absence of a hateful meme dataset that contains ground truth explanations for benchmarking or training. Intuitively, having such explanations can educate and assist content moderators in interpreting and removing flagged hateful memes. This paper address this research gap by introducing Hateful meme with Reasons Dataset (HatReD), which is a new multimodal hateful meme dataset annotated with the underlying hateful contextual reasons. We also define a new conditional generation task that aims to automatically generate underlying reasons to explain hateful memes and establish the baseline performance of state-of-the-art pre-trained language models on this task. We further demonstrate the usefulness of HatReD by analyzing the challenges of the new conditional generation task in explaining memes in seen and unseen domains. The dataset and benchmark models are made available here: https://github.com/Social-AI-Studio/HatRed, Comment: 9 pages. Accepted by IJCAI 2023

Recent research has focused on using large language models (LLMs) to generate explanations for hate speech through fine-tuning or prompting. Despite the growing interest in this area, these generated explanations' effectiveness and potential limitations remain poorly understood. A key concern is that these explanations, generated by LLMs, may lead to erroneous judgments about the nature of flagged content by both users and content moderators. For instance, an LLM-generated explanation might inaccurately convince a content moderator that a benign piece of content is hateful. In light of this, we propose an analytical framework for examining hate speech explanations and conducted an extensive survey on evaluating such explanations. Specifically, we prompted GPT-3 to generate explanations for both hateful and non-hateful content, and a survey was conducted with 2,400 unique respondents to evaluate the generated explanations. Our findings reveal that (1) human evaluators rated the GPT-generated explanations as high quality in terms of linguistic fluency, informativeness, persuasiveness, and logical soundness, (2) the persuasive nature of these explanations, however, varied depending on the prompting strategy employed, and (3) this persuasiveness may result in incorrect judgments about the hatefulness of the content. Our study underscores the need for caution in applying LLM-generated explanations for content moderation. Code and results are available at https://github.com/Social-AI-Studio/GPT3-HateEval., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, Accepted by International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence(IJCAI)

The adoption of digital fabrication - fabrication based on digital design - in the early design phase in projects requires a thorough understanding of the liability factors to design the contract. This paper addresses this issue using a two-stage research approach. First, a case study research maps the process from digital design to digital fabrication in an existing project that adopted digital fabrication using the design-bid-build model. Second, a three-round Delphi survey of 14 stakeholders of that project identifies and ranks 163 liability factors under eight categories: actors, resources, conditions, attributes, processes, artifacts, values, and risks. The resources of management capability and building information modeling (BIM) expertise rank as the two most important liability factors. Building on these findings, the paper presents a conceptual framework for contract design and discusses how the existing project delivery models - design-bid-build, construction management, design-build, and integrated project delivery (IPD) - can consider the liability factors in contracts., Design & Construction Management

[INTRODUCTION] It has been almost 100 years since the sled dog Balto helped save the community of Nome, Alaska, from a diphtheria outbreak. Today, Balto symbolizes the indomitable spirit of the sled dog. He is immortalized in statue and film, and is physically preserved and on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Balto represents a dog population that was reputed to tolerate harsh conditions at a time when northern communities were reliant on sled dogs. Investigating Balto’s genome sequence using technologies for sequencing degraded DNA offers a new perspective on this historic population., [RATIONALE] Analyzing high-coverage (40.4-fold) DNA sequencing data from Balto through comparison with large genomic data resources offers an opportunity to investigate genetic diversity and genome function. We leveraged the genome sequence data from 682 dogs, including both working sled dogs and dog breeds, as well as evolutionary constraint scores from the Zoonomia alignment of 240 mammals, to reconstruct Balto’s phenotype and investigate his ancestry and what might distinguish him from modern dogs., [RESULTS] Balto shares just part of his diverse ancestry with the eponymous Siberian husky breed and was more genetically diverse than both modern breeds and working sled dogs. Both Balto and working sled dogs had a lower burden of rare, potentially damaging variation than modern breeds and fewer potentially damaging variants, suggesting that they represent genetically healthier populations. We inferred Balto’s appearance on the basis of genomic variants known to shape physical characteristics in dogs today. We found that Balto had a combination of coat features atypical for modern sled dog breeds and a slightly smaller stature, inferences that are confirmed by comparison to historical photographs. Balto’s ability to digest starch was enhanced compared to wolves and Greenland sled dogs but reduced compared to modern breeds. He carried a compendium of derived homozygous coding variants at constrained positions in genes connected to bone and skin development, which may have conferred a functional advantage., [CONCLUSION] Balto belonged to a population of small, fast, and fit sled dogs imported from Siberia. By sequencing his genome from his taxidermied remains and analyzing these data in the context of large comparative and canine datasets, we show that Balto and his working sled dog contemporaries were more genetically diverse than modern breeds and may have carried variants that helped them survive the harsh conditions of 1920s Alaska. Although the era of Balto and his contemporaries has passed, comparative genomics, supported by a growing collection of modern and past genomes, can provide insights into the selective pressures that shaped them.

Topic modeling is a widely used technique for revealing underlying thematic structures within textual data. However, existing models have certain limitations, particularly when dealing with short text datasets that lack co-occurring words. Moreover, these models often neglect sentence-level semantics, focusing primarily on token-level semantics. In this paper, we propose PromptTopic, a novel topic modeling approach that harnesses the advanced language understanding of large language models (LLMs) to address these challenges. It involves extracting topics at the sentence level from individual documents, then aggregating and condensing these topics into a predefined quantity, ultimately providing coherent topics for texts of varying lengths. This approach eliminates the need for manual parameter tuning and improves the quality of extracted topics. We benchmark PromptTopic against the state-of-the-art baselines on three vastly diverse datasets, establishing its proficiency in discovering meaningful topics. Furthermore, qualitative analysis showcases PromptTopic's ability to uncover relevant topics in multiple datasets., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, IEEE International Conference on Big Data

The proliferation of social media has given rise to a new form of communication: memes. Memes are multimodal and often contain a combination of text and visual elements that convey meaning, humor, and cultural significance. While meme analysis has been an active area of research, little work has been done on unsupervised multimodal topic modeling of memes, which is important for content moderation, social media analysis, and cultural studies. We propose \textsf{PromptMTopic}, a novel multimodal prompt-based model designed to learn topics from both text and visual modalities by leveraging the language modeling capabilities of large language models. Our model effectively extracts and clusters topics learned from memes, considering the semantic interaction between the text and visual modalities. We evaluate our proposed model through extensive experiments on three real-world meme datasets, which demonstrate its superiority over state-of-the-art topic modeling baselines in learning descriptive topics in memes. Additionally, our qualitative analysis shows that \textsf{PromptMTopic} can identify meaningful and culturally relevant topics from memes. Our work contributes to the understanding of the topics and themes of memes, a crucial form of communication in today's society.\\ \red{\textbf{Disclaimer: This paper contains sensitive content that may be disturbing to some readers.}}, Comment: Accepted at ACM Multimedia'23 Research Track

The rise of social media platforms has brought about a new digital culture called memes. Memes, which combine visuals and text, can strongly influence public opinions on social and cultural issues. As a result, people have become interested in categorizing memes, leading to the development of various datasets and multimodal models that show promising results in this field. However, there is currently a lack of a single library that allows for the reproduction, evaluation, and comparison of these models using fair benchmarks and settings. To fill this gap, we introduce the Meme Analytical Tool Kit (MATK), an open-source toolkit specifically designed to support existing memes datasets and cutting-edge multimodal models. MATK aims to assist researchers and engineers in training and reproducing these multimodal models for meme classification tasks, while also providing analysis techniques to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. To access MATK, please visit \url{https://github.com/Social-AI-Studio/MATK}., Comment: Accepted at ACM Multimedia'23 Open-Source Software Competition Track

Hateful meme detection is a challenging multimodal task that requires comprehension of both vision and language, as well as cross-modal interactions. Recent studies have tried to fine-tune pre-trained vision-language models (PVLMs) for this task. However, with increasing model sizes, it becomes important to leverage powerful PVLMs more efficiently, rather than simply fine-tuning them. Recently, researchers have attempted to convert meme images into textual captions and prompt language models for predictions. This approach has shown good performance but suffers from non-informative image captions. Considering the two factors mentioned above, we propose a probing-based captioning approach to leverage PVLMs in a zero-shot visual question answering (VQA) manner. Specifically, we prompt a frozen PVLM by asking hateful content-related questions and use the answers as image captions (which we call Pro-Cap), so that the captions contain information critical for hateful content detection. The good performance of models with Pro-Cap on three benchmarks validates the effectiveness and generalization of the proposed method., Comment: Camera-ready for 23, ACM MM

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Genetic introgression not only provides material for adaptive evolution but also confounds our understanding of evolutionary history. This is particularly true for canids, a species complex in which genome sequencing and analysis has revealed a complex history of admixture and introgression. Here, we sequence 19 new whole genomes from high-altitude Tibetan and Himalayan wolves and dogs and combine these into a larger data set of 166 whole canid genomes. Using these data, we explore the evolutionary history and adaptation of these and other canid lineages. We find that Tibetan and Himalayan wolves are closely related to each other, and that ∼39% of their nuclear genome is derived from an as-yet-unrecognized wolf-like lineage that is deeply diverged from living Holarctic wolves and dogs. The EPAS1 haplotype, which is present at high frequencies in Tibetan dog breeds and wolves and confers an adaptive advantage to animals living at high altitudes, was probably derived from this ancient lineage. Our study underscores the complexity of canid evolution and demonstrates how admixture and introgression can shape the evolutionary trajectories of species.

Despite the substantial role that chickens have played in human societies across the world, both the geographic and temporal origins of their domestication remain controversial. To address this issue, we analyzed 863 genomes from a worldwide sampling of chickens and representatives of all four species of wild jungle fowl and each of the five subspecies of red jungle fowl (RJF). Our study suggests that domestic chickens were initially derived from the RJF subspecies Gallus gallus spadiceus whose present-day distribution is predominantly in southwestern China, northern Thailand and Myanmar. Following their domestication, chickens were translocated across Southeast and South Asia where they interbred locally with both RJF subspecies and other jungle fowl species. In addition, our results show that the White Leghorn chicken breed possesses a mosaic of divergent ancestries inherited from other subspecies of RJF. Despite the strong episodic gene flow from geographically divergent lineages of jungle fowls, our analyses show that domestic chickens undergo genetic adaptations that underlie their unique behavioral, morphological and reproductive traits. Our study provides novel insights into the evolutionary history of domestic chickens and a valuable resource to facilitate ongoing genetic and functional investigations of the world's most numerous domestic animal.

There is extensive experimental evidence for the importance of biodiversity in sustaining ecosystem functioning. However, such experiments typically prevent immigration by continuously removing non-target species, thereby questioning the generality of these findings to real-world ecosystems. This is particularly true in forest ecosystems where understorey herbaceous species are key biodiversity components but are usually weeded in tree diversity experiments. Consequently, little is known about how tree diversity influences the natural dynamics of understorey herbaceous layers. We conducted a 3-year non-weeded tree diversity experiment composed of eight woody species differing widely in plant economic strategies. We examined how the functional diversity and identity of tree species mixtures drive the temporal dynamics of understorey productivity, functional diversity and composition through canopy packing (CP). Tree mixtures with high functional diversity experienced increased CP over time, thereby decreasing understorey productivity and diversity. Furthermore, herbaceous communities were dominated by species with functional traits typical of low-light conditions [lower community-weighted mean (CWM) of maximum plant height, but larger CWM of specific leaf area] in response to increased CP. Our results provide mechanistic insights into the role of tree functional diversity in shaping the dynamics of biomass, functional diversity and composition of the understorey herbaceous layer during the early successional period. It is expected that the effects of tree functional diversity would also be relevant over time due to the increasing usage of canopy space. This study highlights the significance of natural community processes in determining the effects of tree diversity on the temporal dynamics of previously neglected ecosystem structures and functioning. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Steller's sea cow, an extinct sirenian and one of the largest Quaternary mammals, was described by Georg Steller in 1741 and eradicated by humans within 27 years. Here, we complement Steller's descriptions with paleogenomic data from 12 individuals. We identified convergent evolution between Steller's sea cow and cetaceans but not extant sirenians, suggesting a role of several genes in adaptation to cold aquatic (or marine) environments. Among these are inactivations of lipoxygenase genes, which in humans and mouse models cause ichthyosis, a skin disease characterized by a thick, hyperkeratotic epidermis that recapitulates Steller's sea cows' reportedly bark-like skin. We also found that Steller's sea cows' abundance was continuously declining for tens of thousands of years before their description, implying that environmental changes also contributed to their extinction.

Chong-Bin Tsai,1,2 Chien-Liang Fang,3,4 Ming-Shan Chen,5,6 Min-Yueh Yen,1 Chi-Yen Yeh,7 Zhi-Ming Lai,7 Mei-Ling Hsu,7 Shan-Tair Wang8 1Department of Ophthalmology, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chiayi Christian Hospital, Chiayi City, Taiwan; 2Department of Optometry, College of Medical and Health Science, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan; 3Division of Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery, Department of Surgery, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chia-Yi Christian Hospital, Chiayi City, Taiwan; 4Department of Food Nutrition and Health Biotechnology, College of Medical and Health Science, Asia University, Taichung City, Taiwan; 5Department of Anesthesiology, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chiayi Christian Hospital, Chiayi City, Taiwan; 6Department of Biotechnology, Asia University, Taichung City, Taiwan; 7Department of Information Technology, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chiayi Christian Hospital, Chiayi City, Taiwan; 8Department of Medical Research, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chiayi Christian Hospital, Chiayi City, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chong-Bin Tsai, Department of Ophthalmology, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chiayi Christian Hospital, No. 539 Zhongxiao Road, East District, Chiayi City, 60002, Taiwan, Tel +886-5-2765041 ext 8503, Fax +886-5-2774511, Email cbtsai@gmail.comPurpose: Modern cataract surgeries aim to treat impaired vision and also improve quality of life. An appropriate pre-operative selection of the intraocular lens is important to post-operative quality of life. Patients often have difficulty in choosing the best fit for individual needs. Patient decision aids (PDAs) are useful tools to assist patients in such decision-making process. However, most PDAs are paper-based and lack user interaction. This study is aimed to develop and evaluate an interactive computerized patient decision aid (cPDA) to help patients in the selection of an appropriate intraocular lens model before cataract surgery.Materials and Methods: Patients and their families who were ma

Foliar nitrogen (N) or phosphorus (P) status and their stoichiometric homeostasis are integral parts of the plant nutrient economy that determines the success of plant species in environments where N or P limits plant growth. Despite growing evidence for higher predictability of stoichiometric homeostasis of N (HN) than that of P (HP) on plant species abundance in temperate grasslands, no previous studies explicitly examined how foliar N and P status modulate the relationships between stoichiometric homeostasis and species distribution (regional species abundance) of woody plants, especially in P-limited (sub)tropical ecosystems. We hypothesized that species with a conservative foliar nutrient status but a higher HP (but not HN) would be regional abundant in P-limited forest. We measured foliar N (LNC) and P (LPC) contents of 54 woody species, community composition and soil N and P contents across 94 forest plots in Chinese subtropical forests. Then we evaluated the species' levels of N and P stoichiometric homeostasis and their regional abundance to test our hypotheses. HN and HP significantly increased with decreasing LNC and LPC. Foliar nutrient status positively correlated with the minimum values of both soil N and P contents, but only negatively associated with the maximum value of soil P content, indicating that conservative species can occupy a wider range of soil P- than N-based nutrient niche. Meanwhile, species abundance negatively correlated with LNC and LPC, and positively correlated with HN and HP. However, the structure equation model analysis showed that species abundance increased with decline of LNC but not yet with increased HN. In contrast, species abundance enhanced with increased HP and decreased LPC via HP, rather than directly with a decline of LPC. Synthesis. This study provides empirical evidence that species with conse

Hateful meme detection is a new multimodal task that has gained significant traction in academic and industry research communities. Recently, researchers have applied pre-trained visual-linguistic models to perform the multimodal classification task, and some of these solutions have yielded promising results. However, what these visual-linguistic models learn for the hateful meme classification task remains unclear. For instance, it is unclear if these models are able to capture the derogatory or slurs references in multimodality (i.e., image and text) of the hateful memes. To fill this research gap, this paper propose three research questions to improve our understanding of these visual-linguistic models performing the hateful meme classification task. We found that the image modality contributes more to the hateful meme classification task, and the visual-linguistic models are able to perform visual-text slurs grounding to a certain extent. Our error analysis also shows that the visual-linguistic models have acquired biases, which resulted in false-positive predictions.

As use of digital fabrication increases in architecture, engineering and construction, the industry seeks appropriate management and processes to enable the adoption during the design/planning phase. Many enablers have been identified across various studies; however, a comprehensive synthesis defining the enablers of design for digital fabrication does not yet exist. This work conducts a systematic literature review of 59 journal articles published in the past decade and identifies 140 enablers under eight categories: actors, resources, conditions, attributes, processes, artefacts, values and risks. The enablers’ frequency network is illustrated using an adjacency matrix. Through the lens of actor-network theory, the work creates a relational ontology to demonstrate the linkages between different enablers. Three examples are presented using onion diagrams: circular construction focus, business model focus and digital twin in industrialisation focus. Finally, this work discusses the intersection of relational ontology with process modelling to design future digital fabrication work routines., Design & Construction Management

Background: Species domestication is generally characterized by the exploitation of high-impact mutations through processes that involve complex shifting demographics of domesticated species. These include not only inbreeding and artificial selection that may lead to the emergence of evolutionary bottlenecks, but also post-divergence gene flow and introgression. Although domestication potentially affects the occurrence of both desired and undesired mutations, the way wild relatives of domesticated species evolve and how expensive the genetic cost underlying domestication is remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the demographic history and genetic load of chicken domestication. Results: We analyzed a dataset comprising over 800 whole genomes from both indigenous chickens and wild jungle fowls. We show that despite having a higher genetic diversity than their wild counterparts (average π, 0.00326 vs. 0.00316), the red jungle fowls, the present-day domestic chickens experienced a dramatic population size decline during their early domestication. Our analyses suggest that the concomitant bottleneck induced 2.95% more deleterious mutations across chicken genomes compared with red jungle fowls, supporting the “cost of domestication” hypothesis. Particularly, we find that 62.4% of deleterious SNPs in domestic chickens are maintained in heterozygous states and masked as recessive alleles, challenging the power of modern breeding programs to effectively eliminate these genetic loads. Finally, we suggest that positive selection decreases the incidence but increases the frequency of deleterious SNPs in domestic chicken genomes. Conclusion: This study reveals a new landscape of demographic history and genomic changes associated with chicken domestication and provides insight into the evolutionary genomic profiles of domesticated animals managed under modern human selection.

Background: Species domestication is generally characterized by the exploitation of high-impact mutations through processes that involve complex shifting demographics of domesticated species. These include not only inbreeding and artificial selection that may lead to the emergence of evolutionary bottlenecks, but also post-divergence gene flow and introgression. Although domestication potentially affects the occurrence of both desired and undesired mutations, the way wild relatives of domesticated species evolve and how expensive the genetic cost underlying domestication is remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the demographic history and genetic load of chicken domestication. Results: We analyzed a dataset comprising over 800 whole genomes from both indigenous chickens and wild jungle fowls. We show that despite having a higher genetic diversity than their wild counterparts (average π, 0.00326 vs. 0.00316), the red jungle fowls, the present-day domestic chickens experienced a dramatic population size decline during their early domestication. Our analyses suggest that the concomitant bottleneck induced 2.95% more deleterious mutations across chicken genomes compared with red jungle fowls, supporting the “cost of domestication” hypothesis. Particularly, we find that 62.4% of deleterious SNPs in domestic chickens are maintained in heterozygous states and masked as recessive alleles, challenging the power of modern breeding programs to effectively eliminate these genetic loads. Finally, we suggest that positive selection decreases the incidence but increases the frequency of deleterious SNPs in domestic chicken genomes. Conclusion: This study reveals a new landscape of demographic history and genomic changes associated with chicken domestication and provides insight into the evolutionary genomic profiles of domesticated animals managed under modern human selection.

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent issues where synthesising available evidence is an urgent challenge. Yet such contribution of non-English-language science to scientific communities and the application of science is rarely quantified. Here, we show that non-English-language studies provide crucial evidence for informing global biodiversity conservation. By screening 419,679 peer-reviewed papers in 16 languages, we identified 1,234 non-English-language studies providing evidence on the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation interventions, compared to 4,412 English-language studies identified with the same criteria. Relevant non-English-language studies are being published at an increasing rate in 6 out of the 12 languages where there were a sufficient number of relevant studies. Incorporating non-English-language studies can expand the geographical coverage (i.e., the number of 2 degrees x 2 degrees grid cells with relevant studies) of English-language evidence by 12% to 25%, especially in biodiverse regions, and taxonomic coverage (i.e., the number of species covered by the relevant studies) by 5% to 32%, although they do tend to be based on less robust study designs. Our results show that synthesising non-English-language studies is key to overcoming the widespread lack of local, context-dependent evidence and facilitating evidence-based conservation globally. We urge wider disciplines to rigorously reassess the untapped potential of non-English-language science in informing decisions to address other global challenges., Australian Research Council Future Fellowship; Natural Environment Research Council; Hungary National Research, Development and Innovation Office; German Research Foundation; Germany‘s Excellence Strategy EXC 2037; Poland National Science Centre Sonata Bis 4 Grant; European Union (EU); Horizon 2020; Research and Innovation Programme; Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant; Brasil Coordenaçao de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior; Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT); Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (BECAS CHILE); CNPq-Brazil; University of Queensland Strategic Funding; University of Turin Local Research Grant; Colombian Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation; University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest Ph.D. Fellowship; Arcadia; MAVA; David and Claudia Harding Foundation

Xu Lin,1,* Pei Wang,1 Ding-Wei Liu,2 Yu-Wei Guo,1 Chun-Hui Xie,3 Bin Wang,1,* Rui Dong,4 Li-Xin Sun,1 Ming-Shan Wang,1 Yan-Lin Bi1 1Department of Anesthesiology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital Affiliated to Qingdao University, Qingdao, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Laboratory, Qingdao Municipal Hospital Affiliated to Qingdao University, Qingdao, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Anesthesiology, Weifang Medical University, Weifang, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Anesthesiology, Drum Tower Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yan-Lin Bi; Ming-Shan WangDepartment of Anesthesiology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital Affiliated to Qingdao University, Qingdao, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 186 6167 5610; +86 186 61675608Email yanlinbi68@sina.cn; wmsqingdao@163.comPurpose: Postoperative delirium (POD) is common in elderly patients undergoing laparoscopic surgery for gastric and colorectal malignancies. POD may be affected by different fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2). The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of different FiO2 on POD.Patients and Methods: A randomized, double-blind controlled trial was performed in Qingdao Municipal Hospital Affiliated to Qingdao University. A total of 662 patients aged 65 to 85 years old underwent isolated laparoscopic radical gastrectomy, radical resection of colon cancer, or radical resection of rectal cancer only. A random number table method was used to divide the patients into two groups: 40% FiO2 (group A) and 80% FiO2 (group B). The primary endpoint was the incidence of POD, which was assessed by the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) twice daily during the first 7 postoperative days, and POD severity was measured by the Memorial Delirium Assessment Scale (MDAS). The secondary endpoints were the intraoperative regional cerebral

Despite the substantial role that chickens have played in human societies across the world, both the geographic and temporal origins of their domestication remain controversial. To address this issue, we analyzed 863 genomes from a worldwide sampling of chickens and representatives of all four species of wild jungle fowl and each of the five subspecies of red jungle fowl (RJF). Our study suggests that domestic chickens were initially derived from the RJF subspecies Gallus gallus spadiceus whose present-day distribution is predominantly in southwestern China, northern Thailand and Myanmar. Following their domestication, chickens were translocated across Southeast and South Asia where they interbred locally with both RJF subspecies and other jungle fowl species. In addition, our results show that the White Leghorn chicken breed possesses a mosaic of divergent ancestries inherited from other subspecies of RJF. Despite the strong episodic gene flow from geographically divergent lineages of jungle fowls, our analyses show that domestic chickens undergo genetic adaptations that underlie their unique behavioral, morphological and reproductive traits. Our study provides novel insights into the evolutionary history of domestic chickens and a valuable resource to facilitate ongoing genetic and functional investigations of the world’s most numerous domestic animal.

Recent creation of a Unified Microbiome Initiative (UMI) has the aim of understanding how microbes interact with each other and with us. When pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus infects the skin, the interplay between S. aureus and skin commensal bacteria occurs. Our previous data revealed that skin commensal bacteria can mediate fermentation against the growth of USA300, a community-acquired methicillin-resistant S. aureus MRSA. By using a fermentation process with solid media on a small scale, we define poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEG-DMA) as a selective fermentation initiator which can specifically intensify the probiotic ability of skin commensal Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria. At least five short-chain fatty acids including acetic, butyric and propionic acids with anti-USA300 activities are produced by PEG-DMA fermentation of S. epidermidis. Furthermore, the S. epidermidis-laden PEG-DMA hydrogels effectively decolonized USA300 in skin wounds in mice. The PEG-DMA and its derivatives may become novel biomaterials to specifically tailor the human skin microbiome against invading pathogens.

User identity linkage across online social networks is an emerging research topic that has attracted attention in recent years. Many user identity linkage methods have been proposed so far and most of them utilize user profile, content and network information to determine if two social media accounts belong to the same person. In most cases, user identity linkage methods are evaluated by performing some prediction tasks with the results presented using some overall accuracy measures. However, the methods are rarely compared at the individual user level where a predicted matched (or linked) pair of user identities from different online social networks can be visually compared in terms of user profile (e.g. username), content and network information. Such a comparison is critical to determine the relative strengths and weaknesses of each method. In this work, we present Linky, a visual analytical tool which extracts the results from different user identity linkage methods performed on multiple online social networks and visualizes the user profiles, content and ego networks of the linked user identities. Linky is designed to help researchers to (a) inspect the linked user identities at the individual user level, (b) compare results returned by different user linkage methods, and (c) provide a preliminary empirical understanding on which aspects of the user identities, e.g. profile, content or network, contributed to the user identity linkage results., Comment: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW)

Species of the Bos genus, including taurine cattle, zebu, gayal, gaur, banteng, yak, wisent and bison, have been domesticated at least four times and have been an important source of meat, milk and power for many human cultures. We sequence the genomes of gayal, gaur, banteng, wisent and bison, and provide population genomic sequencing of an additional 98 individuals. We use these data to determine the phylogeny and evolutionary history of these species and show that the threatened gayal is an independent species or subspecies. We show that there has been pronounced introgression among different members of this genus, and that it in many cases has involved genes of considerable adaptive importance. For example, genes under domestication selection in cattle (for example, MITF) were introgressed from domestic cattle to yak. Also, genes in the response-to-hypoxia pathway (for example, EGLN1, EGLN2 and HIF3a) have been introgressed from yak to Tibetan cattle, probably facilitating their adaptation to high altitude. We also validate that there is an association between the introgressed EGLN1 allele and haemoglobin and red blood cell concentration. Our results illustrate the importance of introgression as a source of adaptive variation and during domestication, and suggest that the Bos genus evolves as a complex of genetically interconnected species with shared evolutionary trajectories.

Acne dysbiosis happens when there is a microbial imbalance of the over-growth of Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes) in the acne microbiome. In our previous study, we demonstrated that Staphylococcus epidermidis (S. epidermidis, a probiotic skin bacterium) can exploit glycerol fermentation to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) which have antimicrobial activities to suppress the growth of P. acnes. Unlike glycerol, sucrose is chosen here as a selective fermentation initiator (SFI) that can specifically intensify the fermentation activity of S. epidermidis, but not P. acnes. A co-culture of P. acnes and fermenting S. epidermidis in the presence of sucrose significantly led to a reduction in the growth of P. acnes. The reduction was abolished when P. acnes was co-cultured with non-fermenting S. epidermidis. Results from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis revealed four SCFAs (acetic acid, butyric acid, lactic acid, and succinic acid) were detectable in the media of S. epidermidis sucrose fermentation. To validate the interference of S. epidermidis sucrose fermentation with P. acnes, mouse ears were injected with both P. acnes and S. epidermidis plus sucrose or phosphate buffered saline (PBS). The level of macrophage-inflammatory protein-2 (MIP-2) and the number of P. acnes in ears injected with two bacteria plus sucrose were considerably lower than those in ears injected with two bacteria plus PBS. Our results demonstrate a precision microbiome approach by using sucrose as a SFI for S. epidermidis, holding future potential as a novel modality to equilibrate dysbiotic acne.

The paper presents results of laboratory-measured performance of fan-filter units (FFUs) used for cleanrooms. A total of twenty FFUs collected from the market were tested, including thirteen 1220 mm x 610 mm (or 4 ft x 2 ft) units and seven 1220 mm x 1220 mm (or 4 ft x 4 ft) units. The paper concludes that there are wide variations in FFUs energy performance, and that there are opportunities in improving energy efficiency and lowering operating costs of FFUs. Furthermore, the paper suggests the benefits of having a uniform method for testing and reporting FFU performance. Such a testing method and recommended practice guideline is under development, with heavy input from FFU suppliers, users, and independent institutions that include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), and Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST). An integrated approach with the participation from designers, suppliers, users, and utility companies can help to identify energy-efficient FFUs that are required for many cleanroom applications.

High-density genetic linkage maps are necessary for precisely mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs) controlling grain shape and size in wheat. By applying the Infinium iSelect 9K SNP assay, we have constructed a high-density genetic linkage map with 269 F 8 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) developed between a Chinese cornerstone wheat breeding parental line Yanda1817 and a high-yielding line Beinong6. The map contains 2431 SNPs and 128 SSR & EST-SSR markers in a total coverage of 3213.2 cM with an average interval of 1.26 cM per marker. Eighty-eight QTLs for thousand-grain weight (TGW), grain length (GL), grain width (GW) and grain thickness (GT) were detected in nine ecological environments (Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Kaifeng) during five years between 2010-2014 by inclusive composite interval mapping (ICIM) (LOD ≥ 2.5). Among which, 17 QTLs for TGW were mapped on chromosomes 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 3D, 4A, 4D, 5A, 5B and 6B with phenotypic variations ranging from 2.62% to 12.08%. Four stable QTLs for TGW could be detected in five and seven environments, respectively. Thirty-two QTLs for GL were mapped on chromosomes 1B, 1D, 2A, 2B, 2D, 3B, 3D, 4A, 4B, 4D, 5A, 5B, 6B, 7A and 7B, with phenotypic variations ranging from 2.62% to 44.39%. QGl.cau-2A.2 can be detected in all the environments with the largest phenotypic variations, indicating that it is a major and stable QTL. For GW, 12 QTLs were identified with phenotypic variations range from 3.69% to 12.30%. We found 27 QTLs for GT with phenotypic variations ranged from 2.55% to 36.42%. In particular, QTL QGt.cau-5A.1 with phenotypic variations of 6.82-23.59% was detected in all the nine environments. Moreover, pleiotropic effects were detected for several QTL loci responsible for grain shape and size that could serve as target regions for fine mapping and marker assisted selection in wheat breeding programs.

by Kwok Ming Shan., Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-[109])., Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1, Chapter 1.1 --- Cellular Radio Systems --- p.3, Chapter 1.2 --- Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) --- p.7, Chapter 1.2.1 --- Direct Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) --- p.8, Chapter 1.2.2 --- Frequency Hopping CDMA (FH-GDMA) --- p.11, Chapter 1.2.3 --- Time Hopping CDMA (TH-CDMA) --- p.12, Chapter 1.3 --- Propagation Characteristics --- p.12, Chapter 1.3.1 --- Signal Strength Prediction - Path Loss --- p.13, Chapter 1.3.2 --- Signal Variability --- p.17, Chapter 1.3.3 --- Delay Spread --- p.23, Chapter 1.3.4 --- Coherence Bandwidth --- p.23, Chapter 1.4 --- Power Control in Cellular Radio Systems --- p.24, Chapter 1.4.1 --- Centralized Power Control --- p.24, Chapter 1.4.2 --- Distributed Power Control --- p.25, Chapter 1.4.3 --- CDMA Power Control --- p.29, Chapter 2 --- Contributions --- p.39, Chapter 3 --- ACI Analysis of the Reverse-Link --- p.41, Chapter 3.1 --- Adjacent Cell Interference --- p.42, Chapter 3.2 --- Adjacent Cell Interference Analysis --- p.43, Chapter 3.2.1 --- Interference Analysis of Hexagonal Cells --- p.43, Chapter 3.2.2 --- Interference Analysis of Circular Cell Structure --- p.47, Chapter 3.3 --- Closed-form of Adjacent Cell Interference --- p.51, Chapter 3.4 --- Generalization to Irregular Cell Structure --- p.54, Chapter 3.5 --- Conclusions --- p.57, Chapter 4 --- ACI Analysis of Reverse-Link with Log-normal Shadowing --- p.59, Chapter 4.1 --- Interference with Shadowing --- p.59, Chapter 4.2 --- Conclusions --- p.66, Chapter 5 --- ACI Analysis of Microcell --- p.68, Chapter 5.1 --- Propagation Characteristics of Microcellular Radio Systems --- p.69, Chapter 5.2 --- CDMA Microcellular Radio Systems --- p.70, Chapter 5.3 --- Results and Discussions --- p.74, Chapter 5.4 --- Conclusions --- p.76, Chapter 6 --- Outage Probability Analysis of Imperfect Power Control --- p.77, Chapter 6.1 --- Fast Fading of Signal --- p.78, Chapter 6.2 --- Imperfect Power Control in CDMA --- p.81, Chapter 6.3 --- Conclusions --- p.85, Chapter 7 --- Conclusions --- p.88, Chapter 8 --- Examples of CDMA Cellular Radio Systems --- p.91, Chapter 8.1 --- Qualcomm CDMA system --- p.91, Chapter 8.1.1 --- Forward-link --- p.92, Chapter 8.1.2 --- Reverse-link --- p.93, Chapter 8.1.3 --- Reverse-Link Open-Loop Power Control --- p.94, Chapter 8.1.4 --- Reverse-Link Closed-Loop Power Control --- p.95, Chapter 8.1.5 --- Forward-Link Power Control --- p.96, Chapter 8.2 --- Interdigital Broadband CDMA System --- p.96, Appendix --- p.97, Chapter A --- Derivation of the PDF of the fast fading signal power --- p.97, Chapter B --- Derivation of the Mean-to-standard deviation ratio --- p.98, Chapter C --- Acronyms --- p.100, Bibliography --- p.102, http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5888469, Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)