Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin's Sources on Twitter During the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions

News sourcing practices are critical as they shape from whom journalists get their information and what information they obtain, mostly from elite sources. This study evaluates whether social media platforms expand the range of actors involved in the news through a quantitative content analysis of the sources cited by NPR's Andy Carvin on Twitter during the Arab Spring. Results show that, on balance, nonelite sources had a greater representation in the content than elite sources. Alternative actors accounted for nearly half of the messages. The study points to the innovative forms of production that can emerge with new communication technologies, with the journalist as a central node trusted to authenticate and interpret news flows on social awareness streams.     

Practical scalable image analysis and indexing using Hadoop

The ability to handle very large amounts of image data is important for image analysis, indexing and retrieval applications. Sadly, in the literature, scalability aspects are often ignored or glanced over, especially with respect to the intricacies of actual implementation details. In this paper we present a case-study showing how a standard bag-of-visual-words image indexing pipeline can be scaled across a distributed cluster of machines. In order to achieve scalability, we investigate the optimal combination of hybridisations of the MapReduce distributed computational framework which allows the components of the analysis and indexing pipeline to be effectively mapped and run on modern server hardware. We then demonstrate the scalability of the approach practically with a set of image analysis and indexing tools built on top of the Apache Hadoop MapReduce framework. The tools used for our experiments are freely available as open-source software, and the paper fully describes the nuances of their implementation.     

Lipid metabolism of acetate-1-14C by leukocytes from dogs fed an arteriosclerosis-inducing diet

Dogs were maintainedoon a control ration or on a semisynthetic diet, containing 5% cholesterol and 16% hydrogenated coconut oil, known to induce hyperlipemia and arteriosclerosis. Circulating leukocytes isolated from dogs fed the coconut oil containing diet were shown to incorporate 50% more radioactivity into lipids than control leukocytes when incubated with acetate-1-¹⁴C. This increase, expressed as dpm/mg of leukocyte DNA, was not specific for any particular lipid since the distribution of radioactivity between neutral lipids and phospholipids, as well as among their subfractions, was the same regardless of the diet fed. The labeling patterns observed suggest that leukocyte fatty acid synthesis from acetate occurs predominantly, and perhaps exclusively, by the chain elongation pathway.     

Quaternary reactive dyes containing a thioether‐ethylsulphone group. Part 2; Application methods for the dyeing of nylon†

A member of the new series of cationic reactive dyes containing a thioether‐ethylsulphone grouping referred to in Part 1 of this series has been applied to nylon at pH 3–10. The dye is water soluble and shows excellent substantivity for nylon 6.6 when dyed at the boil at pH 8–10. Under alkaline conditions, gradual β‐elimination back to the vinylsulphone dye occurs and covalent bond formation quickly takes place with the fibre; the higher the pH the more rapidly this occurs. Dyeings carried out at pH 10 showed very good brightness and levelling, together with good wash fastness. The light fastness of dyeings at moderate depth was 4–5 on the Blue Wool scale.     

求解背包问题的病毒协同进化粒子群算法

为提高粒子群算法的搜索性能,提出一种基于病毒进化理论的改进离散粒子群算法:病毒协同进化粒子群算法.在粒子群中引入生物病毒机制和宿主与病毒基于感染操作的思想,病毒采用与粒子等长的编码方式,执行反向代换、结合等操作,利用病毒的水平感染和垂直传播能力较好地维持个体的多样性和对解空间的局部搜索能力.通过解决背包问题对算法进行验证,仿真表明所提算法搜索性能优于遗传算法、模拟退火及标准粒子群等其他算法.该算法能有效求解背包问题等NP难题.     

The effect of various anti-setting systems in wool dyeing. Part 3; Sodium thiocyanate based systems

Wool fabrics undergo setting during dyeing. The degree of set can be controlled by careful selection of dyebath conditions and also by the addition to the dyebath of chemicals termed anti-setting agents. The anti-setting effect of sodium thiocyanate has been evaluated according to its concentration in the dyebath and the dyebath pH. The fabric crease-angle method was adopted to estimate the degree of anti-setting. In the case of wool fabric boiled in the presence of sodium thiocyanate, good anti-setting effects resulted from the pH 3 and pH 5 treatment baths. Chemical changes in the wool were detected using FTIR analysis.     

Dyeing cotton with reactive dyes under neutral conditions

This paper describes a new method to dye cotton with selected reactive dyes by long-liquor – or so-called 'exhaustion'– processes under neutral conditions. Particularly promising results were obtained with reactive dyes containing free vinyl sulphone residues. Although there are dyes on the market that contain free vinyl sulphone groups, for example, the Novacron C (Huntsman) range of dyes, many of this class contain 'blocked' vinyl sulphone residues; examples include sulphatoethylsulphone or chloroethylsulphone precursor groups, and these may be preactivated to the highly reactive vinyl sulphone form simply by a mild alkali treatment. After this activation, neutral, long-liquor dyeings can be carried out at the boil in the presence of electrolyte. This new dyeing method gave very good results in terms of overall fixation efficiency values, without the need for alkali additions.     

Specificity of Systemically Released Cotton Volatiles as Attractants for Specialist and Generalist Parasitic Wasps

Cotton plants under herbivore attack release volatile semiochemicals that attract natural enemies of the herbivores to the damaged plant. The volatiles released in response to herbivory are not only released from the damaged leaves but from the entire cotton plant. We found that cotton plants that released myrcene, (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate, (E)--ocimene, linalool, (E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene, (E)--farnesene, and (E, E)-4,8,12-trimethyl-1,3,7,11-tridecatetraene systemically from undamaged leaves of caterpillar damaged plants were attractive to the generalist parasitoid Cotesia marginiventris and the specialist parasitoid Microplitis croceipes. Plants from which the caterpillar damaged leaves were removed and that released those compounds systemically were significantly preferred over undamaged control plants in two-choice experiments in a flight tunnel. Artificially damaged cotton plants that released green leafy volatiles and constitutive terpenoids were less attractive for M. croceipes and C. marginiventris. Only C. marginiventris preferred artificially damaged plants over undamaged control plants, whereas M. croceipes showed no preference. The apparent lack of specificity of systemically released compounds in response to different herbivores feeding on the lower leaves is discussed.     

Correlations between electrical resistance-hydrogen pressure relationships of the Pd/Pt/H system and alterations of structure with changes of hydrogen content in the Pd/H system

For higher Pt content alloys of the Pd/Pt series of alloys, relationships at 25 °C between hydrogen content, n, and incremental changes of specific electrical resistance, Δρ, seem representable to a good approximation by a common curve, with a maximum of Δρ near n = 0.5 of similar form to ‘Nordheim’ types of relationship between resistivity and composition appropriate to substitutional alloys. An attempt has been made to assess whether phase-transition-related deviations from this symmetrical form of Δρ-n relationship in the cases of palladium itself and Pd/Pt alloys with lower Pt contents may provide useful guidance concerning the sequence of hydrogen occupation of interstitial sites in and β(′) phases (domains) of these systems.