LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Verification of the randomized consensus algorithm of Aspnes and Herlihy: a case study

 Summary. The Probabilistic I/O Automaton model of [31] is used as the basis for a formal presentation and proof of the randomized consensus algorithm of Aspnes and Herlihy. The algorithm guarantees termination within expected polynomial time. The Aspnes-Herlihy algorithm is a rather complex algorithm. Processes move through a succession of asynchronous rounds, attempting to agree at each round. At each round, the agreement attempt involves a distributed random walk. The algorithm is hard to analyze because of its use of nontrivial results of probability theory (specifically, random walk theory which is based on infinitely many coin flips rather than on finitely many coin flips), because of its complex setting, including asynchrony and both nondeterministic and probabilistic choice, and because of the interplay among several different sub-protocols. We formalize the Aspnes-Herlihy algorithm using probabilistic I/O automata. In doing so, we decompose it formally into three subprotocols: one to carry out the agreement attempts, one to conduct the random walks, and one to implement a shared counter needed by the random walks. Properties of all three subprotocols are proved separately, and combined using general results about automaton composition. It turns out that most of the work involves proving non-probabilistic properties (invariants, simulation mappings, non-probabilistic progress properties, etc.). The probabilistic reasoning is isolated to a few small sections of the proof. The task of carrying out this proof has led us to develop several general proof techniques for probabilistic I/O automata. These include ways to combine expectations for different complexity measures, to compose expected complexity properties, to convert probabilistic claims to deterministic claims, to use abstraction mappings to prove probabilistic properties, and to apply random walk theory in a distributed computational setting. We apply all of these techniques to analyze the expected complexity of the algorithm.
Remembering what could have happened: Neural correlates of episodic counterfactual thinking

Recent evidence suggests that our capacities to remember the past and to imagine what might happen in the future largely depend on the same core brain network that includes the middle temporal lobe, the posterior cingulate/retrosplenial cortex, the inferior parietal lobe, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the lateral temporal cortex. However, the extent to which regions of this core brain network are also responsible for our capacity to think about what could have happened in our past, yet did not occur (i.e., episodic counterfactual thinking), is still unknown. The present study examined this issue. Using a variation of the experimental recombination paradigm (Addis, Pan, Vu, Laiser, & Schacter, 2009. Neuropsychologia. 47: 2222-2238), participants were asked both to remember personal past events and to envision alternative outcomes to such events while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Three sets of analyses were performed on the imaging data in order to investigate two related issues. First, a mean-centered spatiotemporal partial least square (PLS) analysis identified a pattern of brain activity across regions of the core network that was common to episodic memory and episodic counterfactual thinking. Second, a non-rotated PLS analysis identified two different patterns of brain activity for likely and unlikely episodic counterfactual thoughts, with the former showing significant overlap with the set of regions engaged during episodic recollection. Finally, a parametric modulation was conducted to explore the differential engagement of brain regions during counterfactual thinking, revealing that areas such as the parahippocampal gyrus and the right hippocampus were modulated by the subjective likelihood of counterfactual simulations. These results suggest that episodic counterfactual thinking engages regions that form the core brain network, and also that the subjective likelihood of our counterfactual thoughts modulates the engagement of different areas within this set of regions.
Vasopressin for in-hospital pediatric cardiac arrest: results from the American Heart Association National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.

OBJECTIVE
To describe the landscape of vasopressin uses reported to the American Heart Association National Registry of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and test the hypothesis that vasopressin use will be associated with improved return of a sustained circulation (ROSC) following in-hospital pediatric cardiac arrest.


DESIGN
Multicentered, national registry of in-hospital CPR.


SETTING
One hundred seventy-six North American Hospitals reporting to registry from October 1999 to November 2004.


PATIENTS
Totally, 1293 consecutive pediatric patients with pulseless cardiac arrest meeting criteria for analysis identified from a registry of all patients resuscitated for cardiac arrest. Inclusion criteria were age <18 years, chest compressions and/or defibrillation, in-hospital location, and documented resuscitation record.


INTERVENTIONS
None.


MEASUREMENTS AND OUTCOMES
Prearrest, event, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and postresuscitation variables were collected. Primary outcome variable was ROSC >20 minutes. Secondary survival outcomes included 24 hour, discharge and favorable neurologic survival on hospital discharge. Descriptive, univariate, and multivariable analysis to evaluate the association of vasopressin with survival outcomes were performed.


RESULTS
Only 5% of patients received vasopressin in this review. Vasopressin was most often given in a pediatric hospital (57%) and in and intensive care setting (76.6%). Patients who were given vasopressin had longer arrest duration (median 37 minutes) vs. those who did not (24 minutes) (p = 0.004). In multivariate analysis, vasopressin was associated with worse ROSC but no difference in 24 hours or discharge survival.


CONCLUSION
Vasopressin was given infrequently in in-hospital cardiac arrest. It was most likely to be given in an intensive care setting, and in a pediatric hospital. Multivariate analysis shows an association with vasopressin use and worse ROSC.
Acoustics Deep Shear Wave Imaging DSWI Analysis in Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs

The evaluation of carbonate reservoirs is challenging for different reasons related to stratigraphic and structural features’ heterogeneities. One of the major challenges is the evaluation of a fracture’s nature, intensity, aperture and extension. Near and far field evaluation techniques have been utilized to achieve advanced fracture evaluation and modeling, the latter being a key factor in successful carbonate reservoir development. Resistivity images and cores help in the quantitative analysis of the near wellbore fracture’s intensity and aperture, while high resolution seismic data can help to evaluate major structural features at a larger scale. It is essential to bridge the gap between the borehole and field scales to further enhance evaluation of these fractures. By using an acquired sonic log and special processing, deep shear wave imaging (DSWI) can take cross-dipole shear wave components and use them to “image” reflectors up to 70 ft away from the borehole, whether they are intersecting the borehole or not. This radial distance coverage — which was the radius of this investigation — can be even greater depending on many parameters. The combination of resistivity imaging and acoustic DSWI techniques offers a great value added to fractured carbonate reservoir evaluation. This article discusses a case study and the lessons learned in a challenging evaluation well where both techniques were deployed to validate this process with the goal of enhancing petrophysical and reservoir characterization models. Future work will involve the integration of results achieved using the DSWI technique with both borehole seismic and surface seismic data to enhance the fracture model and ultimately optimize well placement as well as reservoir performance.
Facial expression imitation in human robot interaction

In this paper, we propose an interactive system for reconstructing human facial expression. In the system, a nonlinear mass-spring model is employed to simulate twenty two facial musclespsila tensions during facial expressions, and then the elastic forces of these tensions are grouped into a vector which is used as the input for facial expression recognition. The experimental results show that the nonlinear facial mass-spring model coupled with the SVM classifier is effective to recognize the facial expressions. Finally, we introduce our robot that can make artificial facial expressions. Experimental results of facial expression generation demonstrate that our robot can imitate six types of facial expressions.
On thermodynamic reliability engineering

Section I contains: Thermodynamics: A fundamental science for physics-of-failure. Although reliability mathematics is well established, having probability theory as its basic tool, the reliability science for physics-of-failure lacks a basic foundation. Thermodynamics is a natural candidate. Many engineers do not realize how closely thermodynamics is tied to reliability, because these subjects are treated separately. This section applies the laws of thermodynamics and reliability theory to illustrate the key aspects that link these sciences into “thermodynamic reliability engineering” which helps to understand the reliability physics-of-failure problems. Section II contains: Aging mechanisms and derivations of key physics-of-failure equations used in accelerated testing and reliability analysis. Irreversible mechanisms that cause aging are discussed (using a thermodynamic framework) along with key physics-of-failure reliability models related to aging. In so doing we derive key physics-of-failure time-compression equations used in reliability stemming from Minor’s hypothesis, the Coffin–Manson power law, Peck’s humidity model, and diffusion methods. Section III contains: Time-dependent parametric aging associated with activated processes. When thermal activation is the rate-controlling process, Arrhenius rate kinetics apply. The parametric time-dependence of an Arrhenius mechanism is addressed and leads to predictable time-dependent aging for certain measurable parameters. Our earlier work developed a thermally activated time-dependent model. This paper describes the shape of the free energy aging path in that model. The results are illustrated for some problems in microelectronics.
Impact of soft and hard insole density on postural stability in older adults.

A significant predictor of falls in the elderly population is attributed to postural instability. Thus, it is important to identify and implement practical clinical interventions to enhance postural stability in older adults. Shoe insoles have been identified as a mechanism to enhance postural control, and our study aimed to evaluate the impact of 2 shoe insoles on static standing balance in healthy, older adults compared with standing posture while barefoot. We hypothesized that both hard and soft shoe insoles would decrease postural sway compared with the barefoot condition. Indeed, excursion distances and sway areas were reduced, and sway velocity was decreased when wearing insoles. The hard insole was also effective when visual feedback was removed, suggesting that the more rigid an insole, the greater potential reduction in fall risk. Thus, shoe insoles may be a cost-effective, clinical intervention that is easy to implement to reduce the risk of falling in the elderly population.
Generating Random Factored Numbers, Easily

Consider the problem of generating a random “pre-factored” number, that is, a uniformly random number between 1 and n, along with its prime factorization. Of course, one could pick a random number in this range and try to factor it, but there are no known polynomialtime factoring algorithms. In his dissertation, Bach presents an efficient algorithm for this problem [1], [2]. Here, we present a significantly simpler algorithm and analysis for the same problem. Our algorithm is, however, a log(n) factor less efficient.
Ownership structure , corporate governance , and fraud : Evidence from China

Our study examines whether ownership structure and boardroom characteristics have an effect on corporate financial fraud in China. The data come from the enforcement actions of the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). The results from univariate analyses, where we compare fraud and nofraud firms, show that ownership and board characteristics are important in explaining fraud. However, using a bivariate probit model with partial observability we demonstrate that boardroom characteristics are important, while the type of owner is less relevant. In particular, the proportion of outside directors, the number of board meetings, and the tenure of the chairman are associated with the incidence of fraud. Our findings have implications for the design of appropriate corporate governance systems for listed firms. Moreover, our results provide information that can inform policy debates within the CSRC. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G34
Comparative Study of PEGASIS and PDCH Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network

In wireless sensor network (WSN) [1], energy efficiency is one of the very important issues. Protocols in WSNs are broadly classified as Hierarchical, Flat and Location Based routing protocols. Hierarchical routing is used to perform efficient routing in WSN. Here we concentrate on Hierarchical Routing protocols, different types of Hierarchical routing protocols, and PEGASIS (Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems) [2, 3] based routing
Impact of Lateral Isolation Oxides on Radiation-Induced Noise Degradation in CMOS Technologies in the 100-nm Regime

Degradation mechanisms associated to lateral isolation oxides are discussed to account for total ionizing dose effects on the noise performance of 90 nm and 130 nm CMOS devices and for their dependence on geometry and operating conditions. In NMOSFETs with a conventional open layout, after irradiation the parasitic transistor at the device edges turns on and contributes to the total device noise. The paper provides a model to help understanding the impact of this radiation-induced noise contribution on white and 1/f noise terms. The different behavior of NMOSFETs in the two examined technology nodes is analyzed in this framework, and design criteria to reduce noise degradation in irradiated devices are discussed.
Neoadjuvant irinotecan, cisplatin, and concurrent radiation therapy with celecoxib for patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer

Patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer who are treated with trimodality therapy have a high recurrence rate. Preclinical evidence suggests that inhibition of cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2) increases the effectiveness of chemoradiation, and observational studies in humans suggest that COX-2 inhibition may reduce esophageal cancer risk. This trial tested the safety and efficacy of combining a COX2 inhibitor, celecoxib, with neoadjuvant irinotecan/cisplatin chemoradiation. This single arm phase 2 trial combined irinotecan, cisplatin, and celecoxib with concurrent radiation therapy. Patients with stage IIA-IVA esophageal cancer received weekly cisplatin 30 mg/m2 plus irinotecan 65 mg/m2 on weeks 1, 2, 4, and 5 concurrently with 5040 cGy of radiation therapy. Celecoxib 400 mg was taken orally twice daily during chemoradiation, up to 1 week before surgery, and for 6 months following surgery. Forty patients were enrolled with stage IIa (30 %), stage IIb (20 %), stage III (22.5 %), and stage IVA (27.5 %) esophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer (AJCC, 5th Edition). During chemoradiation, grade 3–4 treatment-related toxicity included dysphagia (20 %), anorexia (17.5 %), dehydration (17.5 %), nausea (15 %), neutropenia (12.5 %), diarrhea (10 %), fatigue (7.5 %), and febrile neutropenia (7.5 %). The pathological complete response rate was 32.5 %. The median progression free survival was 15.7 months and the median overall survival was 34.7 months. 15 % (n = 6) of patients treated on this study developed brain metastases. The addition of celecoxib to neoadjuvant cisplatin-irinotecan chemoradiation was tolerable; however, overall survival appeared comparable to prior studies using neoadjuvant cisplatin-irinotecan chemoradiation alone. Further studies adding celecoxib to neoadjuvant chemoradiation in esophageal cancer are not warranted. Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT00137852 , registered August 29, 2005.
Hybrid Heuristic for Scheduling Data Analytics Workflow Applications in Hybrid Cloud Environment

Effective scheduling is a key concern for the execution of performance driven applications, such as workflows in dynamic and cost driven environment including Cloud. The majority of existing scheduling techniques are based on meta-heuristics that produce good schedules with advance reservation given the current state of Cloud services or heuristics that are dynamic in nature, and map the workflow tasks to services on-the-fly, but lack the ability of generating schedules considering workflow-level optimization and user QoS constraints. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive Hybrid Heuristic for user constrained data-analytics workflow scheduling in hybrid Cloud environment by integrating the dynamic nature of heuristic based approaches as well as workflow-level optimization capability of meta-heuristic based approaches. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by a comprehensive case study with comparison to existing techniques.
Customizable Route Planning in Road Networks

We propose the first routing engine for computing driving directions in large-scale road networks that satisfies all requirements of a real-world production system. It supports arbitrary metrics (cost functions) and turn costs, enables real-time queries, and can incorporate a new metric in less than a second, which is fast enough to support real-time traffic updates and personalized cost functions. The amount of metric-specific data is a small fraction of the graph itself, which allows us to maintain several metrics in memory simultaneously. The algorithm is the core of the routing engine currently in use by Bing Maps.
Failure detection and consensus in the crash-recovery model

 Summary. We study the problems of failure detection and consensus in asynchronous systems in which processes may crash and recover, and links may lose messages. We first propose new failure detectors that are particularly suitable to the crash-recovery model. We next determine under what conditions stable storage is necessary to solve consensus in this model. Using the new failure detectors, we give two consensus algorithms that match these conditions: one requires stable storage and the other does not. Both algorithms tolerate link failures and are particularly efficient in the runs that are most likely in practice – those with no failures or failure detector mistakes. In such runs, consensus is achieved within $3 \delta$ time and with 4 n messages, where $\delta$ is the maximum message delay and n is the number of processes in the system.
A New Parallel Algorithm for EREW PRAM Matrix Multiplication

This work presents a new parallel matrix multiplication algorithm using an exclusive-read and exclusive-write (EREW), parallel random access memory (PRAM) model for a fixed number of processors. This algorithm used for computing the matrix multiplication analyses the logical pattern that exists for accessing the elements of the matrix efficiently. The proposed algorithm PEMM (Parallel EREW algorithm for Matrix Multiplication) works with the time complexity of O(n), but takes less number of iterations when compared with the existing work. It can also run on parallel machines other than the EREW PRAM.
Local and global election result collation & transmission system

We present a technique for election results collation and transmission in largely populated areas. In our earlier works we presented an electronic balloting and result transmission systems [1] [2]. Whereas these systems perform creditably well where voters are within estimated number of between 500 and 1000, a problem of local collation was introduced where the population exceeds 2000 where multiple devices have to be introduced. We achieved local collation by providing an admin device for result collation from each e-balloting devices at various voting points. The results collated at local level were further transmitted to central collation center from each polling units after local result have been announced. The system provided way to ensure local result display at individual Polling Units (a requirement of Nigerian laws) and reduces congestion during results' transmission.
Light Fields and Computational Imaging

A survey of the theory and practice of light field imaging emphasizes the devices researchers in computer graphics and computer vision have built to capture light fields photographically and the techniques they have developed to compute novel images from them
The thermodynamics of the solid oxides of vanadium

Abstract The available thermodynamic data have been critically reviewed and extended to provide values of S 298 and Δ H 298 , and analytical equations for -( G - H 289 )/ T as a function of temperature for 14 of the high-temperature solid phases of the V-O system.
Unliganded Thyroid Hormone Receptor α Regulates Developmental Timing via Gene Repression in Xenopus tropicalis

Thyroid hormone (TH) receptor (TR) expression begins early in development in all vertebrates when circulating TH levels are absent or minimal, yet few developmental roles for unliganded TRs have been established. Unliganded TRs are expected to repress TH-response genes, increase tissue responsivity to TH, and regulate the timing of developmental events. Here we examined the role of unliganded TRα in gene repression and development in Xenopus tropicalis. We used transcription activator-like effector nuclease gene disruption technology to generate founder animals with mutations in the TRα gene and bred them to produce F1 offspring with a normal phenotype and a mutant phenotype, characterized by precocious hind limb development. Offspring with a normal phenotype had zero or one disrupted TRα alleles, and tadpoles with the mutant hind limb phenotype had two truncated TRα alleles with frame shift mutations between the two zinc fingers followed by 40-50 mutant amino acids and then an out-of-frame stop codon. We examined TH-response gene expression and early larval development with and without exogenous TH in F1 offspring. As hypothesized, mutant phenotype tadpoles had increased expression of TH-response genes in the absence of TH and impaired induction of these same genes after exogenous TH treatment, compared with normal phenotype animals. Also, mutant hind limb phenotype animals had reduced hind limb and gill responsivity to exogenous TH. Similar results in methimazole-treated tadpoles showed that increased TH-response gene expression and precocious development were not due to early production of TH. These results indicate that unliganded TRα delays developmental progression by repressing TH-response genes.