Stochastic Sampling and Machine Learning Techniques for Social Media State Production

The rise in the importance of social media platforms as communication tools has been both a blessing and a curse. For scientists, they offer an unparalleled opportunity to study human social networks. However, these platforms have also been used to propagate misinformation and hate speech with alarming velocity and frequency. The overarching aim of our research is to leverage the data from social media platforms to create and evaluate a high-fidelity, at-scale computational simulation of online social behavior which can provide a deep quantitative understanding of adversaries\u27 use of the global information environment. Our hope is that this type of simulation can be used to predict and understand the spread of misinformation, false narratives, fraudulent financial pump and dump schemes, and cybersecurity threats. To do this, our research team has created an agent-based model that can handle a variety of prediction tasks. This dissertation introduces a set of sampling and deep learning techniques that we developed to predict specific aspects of the evolution of online social networks that have proven to be challenging to accurately predict with the agent-based model. First, we compare different strategies for predicting network evolution with sampled historical data based on community features. We demonstrate that our community-based model outperforms the global one at predicting population, user, and content activity, along with network topology over different datasets. Second, we introduce a deep learning model for burst prediction. Bursts may serve as a signal of topics that are of growing real-world interest. Since bursts can be caused by exogenous phenomena and are indicative of burgeoning popularity, leveraging cross-platform social media data is valuable for predicting bursts within a single social media platform. An LSTM model is proposed in order to capture the temporal dependencies and associations based upon activity information. These volume predictions can also serve as a valuable input for our agent-based model. Finally, we conduct an exploration of Graph Convolutional Networks to investigate the value of weak-ties in classifying academic literature with the use of graph convolutional neural networks. Our experiments look at the results of treating weak-ties as if they were strong-ties to determine if that assumption improves performance. We also examine how node removal affects prediction accuracy by selecting nodes according to different centrality measures. These experiments provide insight for which nodes are most important for the performance of targeted graph convolutional networks. Graph Convolutional Networks are important in the social network context as the sociological and anthropological concept of \u27homophily\u27 allows for the method to use network associations in assisting the attribute predictions in a social network

Analytic assessment of effects of enacting clause No. 272 of direct tax regulations on tax incomes in the general tax office of Yazd

Today, governments are using tax as an important pillar in resource allocation, occupation, Reasonable criteria of price stability, international accounts balance and finally rational and proper distribution of incomes. Despite the tax is the most important necessity of survival in every government and country, it has always been caused conflict between taxpayers and tax officials. This research theoretically is looking for answer to this question that “is the tax system released from pressure of annual audited accounts of all persons by tax staff without decreasing in tax revenues and with satisfaction, trust, and protection of taxpayers’ law?” In this regard, the matter 272 of the direct taxation law that was prepared by the Society of CPAs, and was approved in 02/06/2002, by Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, for the tax audit reports, is used as a liberation solution for cited pressure. So, the purpose of this research is implementing that strategy. The results showed that the matter 272 of the direct taxation law is not caused by increasing tax revenues meaning that the first hypothesis was declined, although the second hypothesis was confirmed by three groups but the third hypothesis had been confirmed only by tax staff and Society CPAs and was declined by finance managers

Analytic assessment of effects of enacting clause No. 272 of direct tax regulations on tax incomes in the general tax office of Yazd

Today, governments are using tax as an important pillar in resource allocation, occupation, Reasonable criteria of price stability, international accounts balance and finally rational and proper distribution of incomes. Despite the tax is the most important necessity of survival in every government and country, it has always been caused conflict between taxpayers and tax officials. This research theoretically is looking for answer to this question that “is the tax system released from pressure of annual audited accounts of all persons by tax staff without decreasing in tax revenues and with satisfaction, trust, and protection of taxpayers’ law?” In this regard, the matter 272 of the direct taxation law that was prepared by the Society of CPAs, and was approved in 02/06/2002, by Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, for the tax audit reports, is used as a liberation solution for cited pressure. So, the purpose of this research is implementing that strategy. The results showed that the matter 272 of the direct taxation law is not caused by increasing tax revenues meaning that the first hypothesis was declined, although the second hypothesis was confirmed by three groups but the third hypothesis had been confirmed only by tax staff and Society CPAs and was declined by finance managers

Analytic assessment of effects of enacting clause No. 272 of direct tax regulations on tax incomes in the general tax office of Yazd

Today, governments are using tax as an important pillar in resource allocation, occupation, Reasonable criteria of price stability, international accounts balance and finally rational and proper distribution of incomes. Despite the tax is the most important necessity of survival in every government and country, it has always been caused conflict between taxpayers and tax officials. This research theoretically is looking for answer to this question that “is the tax system released from pressure of annual audited accounts of all persons by tax staff without decreasing in tax revenues and with satisfaction, trust, and protection of taxpayers’ law?” In this regard, the matter 272 of the direct taxation law that was prepared by the Society of CPAs, and was approved in 02/06/2002, by Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, for the tax audit reports, is used as a liberation solution for cited pressure. So, the purpose of this research is implementing that strategy. The results showed that the matter 272 of the direct taxation law is not caused by increasing tax revenues meaning that the first hypothesis was declined, although the second hypothesis was confirmed by three groups but the third hypothesis had been confirmed only by tax staff and Society CPAs and was declined by finance managers

Study of gyrA S83R Mutation Rate in Vancomycin Resistant Entrococcus Faecium

Enterococci are among Gram-positive cocci and are common inhabitants of the human gastrointestinal tract and enough potent to cause serious infections such as bacteremia, urinary tract infections (UTIs) and endocarditis. Enterococci are not generally considered as highly infectious bacterium. However, the main reason for treatment failure in enterococcal infections is acquired resistance to glycopeptide antibiotics, specifically vancomycin. Most enterococcal infections in human such as gastroenteritis, intestinal infections, and endocarditis have been caused by E. faecalis and E. facieum. They are holding the second place of most frequent cause of hospital infections since 1990. In present study gyrA S83R polymorphism rate in vancomycin resistant Enterococcus faecium isolated from environment, food industries, and hospitals of Tehran were examined by ARMS-PCR technique. DNA was extracted from the bacterial colonies using standard column method, after separating the samples into two groups of antibiotic resistant and antibiotic susceptible by antibiogram test. A fragment of gyrA gene was amplified using PCR method to investigate point mutation of S83R position. ARMS-PCR technique was applied to detect the presence or absence of mutation using a set of specified primers which can be annealed when the mutation is present. The results were statistically analyzed by chi-square test (p < 0.05) using SPSS 19th version. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between the presences of S83R polymorphism with vancomycin resistance trait in Entrococcus faecium. Therefore, this technique could be used as a diagnostic tool to detect vancomycin resistance cases of E. faecium in patients and environment.HIGHLIGHTS•There is a strong association between the presence of point mutation at the position of Ser83 and vancomycin resistant phenotype.•Resistance in Enterococcus spp. is highly mediated by mutations in gyrA gene which plays a major role in interaction with vancomycin.•Vancomycin is the only drug that can be consistently relied on for the treatment of infections caused by multidrug resistant enterococci.•VRE has presented a serious challenge for the Iranian medical community

A Cross-Repository Model for Predicting Popularity in GitHub

Social coding platforms, such as GitHub, can serve as natural laboratories for studying the diffusion of innovation through tracking the pattern of code adoption by programmers. This paper focuses on the problem of predicting the popularity of software repositories over time; our aim is to forecast the time series of popularity-related events (code forks and watches). In particular, we are interested in cross-repository patterns-how do events on one repository affect other repositories? Our proposed LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) recurrent neural network integrates events across multiple active repositories, outperforming a standard ARIMA (Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average) time series prediction based on the single repository. The ability of the LSTM to leverage cross-repository information gives it a significant edge over standard time series forecasting.Comment: 6 page

An Analytical Study of the Khalafallah's Qur'anic Political Thoughts

Throughout Islamic history, there have been various theories about the relationship between religion and politics, from disagreement to controversy. This debate has also come to the attention of scholars in the modern era after the important event of the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate. Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Khalafallah, as one of the New Mu'tazilis, rejected the relationship in this area, With the layout of the "worldly government" theory. He considered Islam a cultural element Referring to the historical origin of the meanings of the political terminology and neglect the Qur'anic-political theories, the Qur'an being devoid of new political terms and acknowledging the disapproval of the confluence of religion and state in the sacred text with the Shari'ah, He considers the government based on the council (democracy) and his legitimacy depends on it. And by explaining the difference between the "Prophet's position" and the "political power of the Prophet" based on the Qur'an and history, the Prophet's government introduces a civil (not religious) phenomenon that will not continue thereafter. The present study, by descriptive-analytical method, seeks to find out the causes of such ideas in Khalafallah and to explain the impact of three factors of political developments (caliphate crisis - colonialism), scientific (renewal of religious heritage) and cultural (defending Islam and the Prophet (pbuh) against the Western notion) address his thinking

Comparison of Microleakage of MTA and CEM Cement Apical Plugs in Three Different Media

Introduction: Microleakage is of the causes of endodontic treatment failure. The aim of this in vitro study, was to compare the microleakage of mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) and calcium-enriched mixture (CEM) cement apical plugs in three environments. Methods and Materials: A total of 130 human extracted single rooted teeth were collected. After decoronation, preparation of the root canal space and simulation of open apices, 5 teeth were selected as positive and negative control groups and the rest of the samples were randomly divided into two groups (MTA plug and CEM cement plug) and each group was divided into 3 subgroups (dry, contaminated with saliva and contaminated with blood). In each group apical plug was placed into the canal. After full setting of the apical plug, microleakage of the samples were evaluated using fluid filtration method and the data were analyzed using two-way analysis of variance. Results: In dry and saliva contaminated environments, the leakage of MTA samples were 40.906±2.081 and 39.608±2.081, respectively which was significantly more than that of CEM cement samples (26.977±2.081 and 27.000±2.081, respectively). However, in blood-contaminated environments, the amount of leakage in MTA group (21.640±2.081) was significantly lower than CEM cement group (44.358±2.081). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, in dry and saliva-contaminated conditions CEM cement provides significantly better seal in comparison to MTA.Keywords: Calcium-Enriched Mixture Cement; Microleakage; Mineral Trioxide Aggregat

Integration of additive manufacturing and inkjet printed electronics: a potential route to parts with embedded multifunctionality

Additive manufacturing, an umbrella term for a number of different manufacturing techniques, has attracted increasing interest recently for a number of reasons, such as the facile customisation of parts, reduced time to manufacture from initial design, and possibilities in distributed manufacturing and structural electronics. Inkjet printing is an additive manufacturing technique that is readily integrated with other manufacturing processes, eminently scalable and used extensively in printed electronics. It therefore presents itself as a good candidate for integration with other additive manufacturing techniques to enable the creation of parts with embedded electronics in a timely and cost effective manner. This review introduces some of the fundamental principles of inkjet printing; such as droplet generation, deposition, phase change and post-deposition processing. Particular focus is given to materials most relevant to incorporating structural electronics and how post-processing of these materials has been able to maintain compatibility with temperature sensitive substrates. Specific obstacles likely to be encountered in such an integration and potential strategies to address them will also be discussed

Comparison of High-intensity Laser Therapy with Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy in the Treatment of Patients with Plantar Fasciitis: A Double-blind Randomized Clinical Trial

Background: The most common cause of heel pain is plantar fasciitis (PF). Although conservative treatments relieve pain in more than 90% of patients, it may remain painful in some cases. This study aimed to compare High-intensity Laser Therapy (HILT) with Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT) in patients with PF.Methods: In this double-blinded randomized clinical trial (conducted in Yazd, Iran, from May 2020 to March 2021), patients were classified into two groups, including the ESWT and HILT, using online randomization. Nine sessions, three times a week for 3 weeks, were the treatment period in both groups. Visual Analogue Score (VAS), Heel Tenderness Index (HTI), and the SF36 questionnaire were compared and analyzed statistically at the beginning and 9 months after treatment. Results: 38 patients (19 in each group) completed the study. Results showed that pain and patient satisfaction improved significantly 3 months after treatment. The VAS and HTI decreased 3 months after treatment in both groups, which was statistically significant (P<0.001). The SF36 score in both groups increased 3 months after treatment, and this increase was statistically significant (P<0.001). Although the two modalities were effective based on VAS, HTI, and SF36, a significant statistical difference was observed between them (P=0.03, P=0.006, P=0.002, respectively), and the HILT was more effective.Conclusion: ESWT and HILT decrease pain and increase patient satisfaction in PF. Besides, both methods are non-invasive and safe. However, there is a significant difference between them, and HILT is more effective.Trial registration number: IRCT20210913052465N1