Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aggregate-flow scheduling: theory and practice

This dissertation studies providing QoS to individual flows using aggregate-flow scheduling. Our work is carried out on both theoretical and practical sides. We present a theoretical framework for reasoning about scalable QoS provisioning using aggregate-flow scheduling, constrained to be implementable in IP networks. Our control framework—Scalar QoS Control—generalizes per-hop and edge control achievable by setting a scalar value in packet headers, e.g., the TOS field of IP. We study optimal aggregate-flow scheduling problem under the framework and the properties the optimal solution exhibit which facilitate end-to-end QoS via the joint action of aggregate-flow scheduling per-hop and per-flow provisioning at the edge. We design an optimal aggregate-flow per-hop control algorithm that achieves the induced optimal aggregate-flow scheduling solution and implement the algorithm in Cisco routers. We conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation by both simulation and experiments over Q-bahn testbed comprised of Cisco routers running the implemented optimal aggregate-flow per-hop control. The benchmarking results confirm our theoretical framework and analysis, and reveal further quantitative features of both structural and dynamical properties of the system. Our results, collectively, show that user-specified services can be efficiently and effectively achieved over networks with optimal aggregate-flow per-hop control substrate when coupled with either open-loop or closed-loop (adaptive label control) edge control. We generalize our optimal aggregate-flow per-hop control analysis by considering stochastic input and study optimal aggregate-flow scheduling problem in general multi-class queueing systems. We introduce a stochastic framework of optimal aggregate-flow scheduling, which extends the optimal per-flow scheduling framework pioneered by Coffman and Mitrani. We show that optimal aggregate-flow scheduling in multi-class G/G/1 systems with work-conserving, non-preemptive and non-anticipative scheduling disciplines—for which Kleinrock's conservation law holds—is NP-hard. This stands in contrast with the quadratic time complexity of optimal per-flow scheduling and cubic time complexity of optimal aggregate-flow scheduling in static input environments subject to relative service differentiation. We show that computational hardness results from the combination of optimal aggregation and Kleinrock's conservation law.
Foundations of Modern Graph Query Languages

RENZO ANGLES, Universidad de Talca & Center for Semantic Web Research MARCELO ARENAS, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Center for Semantic Web Research PABLO BARCELÓ, DCC, Universidad de Chile & Center for Semantic Web Research AIDAN HOGAN, DCC, Universidad de Chile & Center for Semantic Web Research JUAN REUTTER, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Center for Semantic Web Research DOMAGOJ VRGOČ, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Center for Semantic Web Research
Adjoint Algorithmic Differentiation: Calibration and Implicit Function Theorem

Adjoint Algorithmic Differentiation is an efficient way to obtain financial instrument price derivatives with respect to the data inputs. Often the differentiation does not cover the full pricing process when a model calibration is performed. Thanks to the implicit function theorem, the differentiation of the solver embedded in the calibration is not required to differentiate to full pricing process. An efficient approach to the full process differentiation is described.
Crowdsourcing Forecasts: competition for sell-side analysts?

Recent research has begun to question the importance of forecasts to sell-side analysts. Prior research established the co-existence of longer horizon optimism and short-term pessimism in sell-side forecasts. These factors motivate us to explore a new phenomenon – crowdsourcing, as an alternative source of forecasts. We obtain revenue and earnings forecasts from estimize, an entity which crowdsources and distributes these forecasts online. We find the estimize forecasts are, on average, as accurate as the sell-side. Further, although our results show the estimize forecasts to be relatively more optimistic, on average, and particularly in short horizons, our analysis suggest it is at least partially explained by the extreme pessimism of the sell-side’s final forecasts. Our market test confirms support for the superiority of estimize’s short-term forecasts. Our results provide support for the value of crowdsourced forecasts. JEL Classification: G28; G29; M41; M43
Treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm–Infected Wounds with Clinical Wound Care Strategies: A Quantitative Study Using an In Vivo Rabbit Ear Model

Background: Bacterial biofilm is recognized as a major detriment to wound healing. The efficacy of traditional wound care against biofilm has never been studied. The authors evaluated the effect of clinical strategies against biofilm-infected wounds in a quantitative, in vivo model. Methods: Using a rabbit ear biofilm model, wounds were inoculated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa or left as uninfected controls. Inoculated wounds acted as untreated controls or underwent treatment: every-other-day sharp débridement (I), lavage (II), Silvadene (III), or lavage and Silvadene (IV), or initial débridement with daily lavage and Silvadene (V). Wounds were harvested on days 12 and 18. Histological wound healing parameters and viable bacterial counts were measured. Biofilm structure was studied with scanning electron microscopy. Results: Uninfected controls healed better than P. aeruginosa biofilm–infected wounds across all parameters (p = 0.01). Groups IV and V demonstrated improved healing (p = 0.05) and decreased bacterial count (p = 0.05) compared with untreated P. aeruginosa biofilm, whereas groups I through III showed no differences in either. Scanning electron microscopy following a group V treatment showed temporary disruption of biofilm structure, which reformed in 24 hours. Conclusions: Pseudomonal biofilm markedly impairs wound healing, shown quantitatively using our in vivo model. Despite common practice, wound care strategies cannot restore biofilm wounds to a healing phenotype when used alone or infrequently. The durability of biofilm extends nonhealing wound chronicity, thus requiring aggressive, multimodal therapy aimed at reducing bacterial burden. The authors' novel, rigorous study validates critical principles applicable to all clinical wound care.
Treatment Outcomes and Prognostic Factors in Pediatric Non-brainstem Astrocytoma in North East of Iran

Background Central Nervous System (CNS) tumors have accounted for approximately one fourth of all pediatric malignancies. CNS tumors have been the most common solid malignancies among the children. In this study, we have evaluated survival and prognostic factors in children with non-brain stem astrocytoma. Methods Children with non-brain stem astrocytoma, referring to radiation oncology centers of Ghaem and Omid hospitals of Mashhad, have included in this retrospective study, in years 2000-2010. Patients’ demographic data, past medical history, clinical symptoms, extent of tumor resection and treatment modality have recorded. Disease-free survival and overall survival have measured using Kaplan-Meier method. Results We studied 87 patients with male to female ratio of 44/43 (1.02), and median age of 10 yrs (range: 2-15 yrs). Tumor grade distribution was as follows: grade I: 20 (23%) subjects; grade II: 34 (39.1%) subjects; grade III: 20 (23%) subjects; and grade IV: 13 (14.9%) subjects. The median follow-up duration was 38 months (6 to 110), and 16 months (4 to 100) for patients with low- and high-grade tumors. The 2-year survival rates in grades I-IV were 100%, 84.7%, 60% and 10.8%, respectively. Tumor resection less than gross total and non-ambulation have associated with a significantly inferior survival in both groups multivariate analysis, with high- and low-grade tumors. Conclusion For all the cases of the pediatric non-brainstem astrocytoma, tumor grade had dramatic influences on their survival. Performing gross total resection was crucial for achieving favorable outcomes in both low-grade and high-grade cases. Moreover, according to the results, having major motor deficits has associated with lower survival.
Karyotyping, is it worthwhile in transsexualism?

INTRODUCTION Karyotyping is often performed in transsexual individuals. AIM Quantification and characterization of karyotype findings and abnormalities in transsexual persons. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Karyotypes were listed both in male-to-female and in female-to-male transsexual persons. METHODS The data were collected through a retrospective study. RESULTS Karyotypes of 368 transsexual individuals (251 male-to-female, 117 female-to-male) are described. Normal findings were found in 97.55%. Prevalence of abnormal karyotypes was 3.19% among male-to-female, and 0.85% among female-to-male transsexuals. Nine karyotypes showed variations; Klinefelter syndrome was confirmed in three persons, whereas others displayed autosomal aberrations. CONCLUSION Karyotyping is only of very limited information in the transsexual population.
Exploring the feasibility of a meta-structure for DSM-V and ICD-11: could it improve utility and validity?

Background The organization of mental disorders into 16 DSM-IV and 10 ICD-10 chapters is complex and based on clinical presentation. We explored the feasibility of a more parsimonious meta-structure based on both risk factors and clinical factors. Method Most DSM-IV disorders were allocated to one of five clusters as a starting premise. Teams of experts then reviewed the literature to determine within-cluster similarities on 11 predetermined validating criteria. Disorders were included and excluded as determined by the available data. These data are intended to inform the grouping of disorders in the DSM-V and ICD-11 processes. Results The final clusters were neurocognitive (identified principally by neural substrate abnormalities), neurodevelopmental (identified principally by early and continuing cognitive deficits), psychosis (identified principally by clinical features and biomarkers for information processing deficits), emotional (identified principally by the temperamental antecedent of negative emotionality), and externalizing (identified principally by the temperamental antecedent of disinhibition). Conclusions Large groups of disorders were found to share risk factors and also clinical picture. There could be advantages for clinical practice, public administration and research from the adoption of such an organizing principle.
Protein Flexibility and the Correlation Ratchet

Biomolecular motors are tiny engines that transport material at the microscopic level within biological cells. Since biomolecular motors typically transport cargo that are much larger than themselves, one would expect the speed of such a motor to be severely limited by the small diffusion coefficientof it s enormous cargo. Ithas been suggest ed by Berg and Kahn ( Mobility and Recognition in Cell Biology, H. Sund and C. Veeger, eds., De Gruyter, Berlin, 1983) and Meister, Caplan, and Berg (Biophys. J., 55 (1989), pp. 905-914) that this limitation can be overcome if the tether that connects the motor to its cargo is sufficiently elastic. In a recent article the effects of the elastic properties of the tether on the speed of the motor were investigated when the driving mechanism was a Brownian ratchet (SIAM J. Appl. Math., 60 (2000), pp. 842-867). Here we extend that work to include the correlation ratchet (C. Peskin, G. Ermentrout, and G. Oster, in Mechanics and Cellular Engineering, V. Mow etal., eds., Springer, New York, 1994; Phys. Rev. Lett., 72 (1994), pp. 2652- 2655; Phys. Rev. Lett. , 72 (1994), pp. 1766-1769). In contrast to the Brownian ratchet, it is shown that in the limit of a large motor diffusion coefficient the average velocity increases monotonically as the stiffness of the tether is increased. However, Monte-Carlo simulations reveal that for any finite diffusion coefficient of the motor there is an optimal stiffness at which the motor travels fastest.
Unsupervised segmentation of synthetic aperture Radar sea ice imagery using a novel Markov random field model

Environmental and sensor challenges pose difficulties for the development of computer-assisted algorithms to segment synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sea ice imagery. In this research, in support of operational activities at the Canadian Ice Service, images containing visually separable classes of either ice and water or multiple ice classes are segmented. This work uses image intensity to discriminate ice from water and uses texture features to identify distinct ice types. In order to seamlessly combine image spatial relationships with various image features, a novel Bayesian segmentation approach is developed and applied. This new approach uses a function-based parameter to weight the two components in a Markov random field (MRF) model. The devised model allows for automatic estimation of MRF model parameters to produce accurate unsupervised segmentation results. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to successfully segment various SAR sea ice images and achieve improvement over existing published methods including the standard MRF-based method, finite Gamma mixture model, and K-means clustering.
DPLL bit synchronizer with rapid acquisition using adaptive Kalman filtering techniques

A second-order DPLL with time-varying loop gains is applied to the symbol synchronization of burst mode data signals. An algorithm to control the DPLL loop gains is derived from adaptive Kalman filtering theory. Simulation results for the variable gain DPLL compared to a fixed gain DPLL demonstrate the improved acquisition performance. >
Cultural Event recognition with visual ConvNets and temporal models

This paper presents our contribution to the ChaLearn Challenge 2015 on Cultural Event Classification. The challenge in this task is to automatically classify images from 50 different cultural events. Our solution is based on the combination of visual features extracted from convolutional neural networks with temporal information using a hierarchical classifier scheme. We extract visual features from the last three fully connected layers of both CaffeNet (pre-trained with ImageNet) and our fine tuned version for the ChaLearn challenge. We propose a late fusion strategy that trains a separate low-level SVM on each of the extracted neural codes. The class predictions of the low-level SVMs form the input to a higher level SVM, which gives the final event scores. We achieve our best result by adding a temporal refinement step into our classification scheme, which is applied directly to the output of each low-level SVM. Our approach penalizes high classification scores based on visual features when their time stamp does not match well an event-specific temporal distribution learned from the training and validation data. Our system achieved the second best result in the ChaLearn Challenge 2015 on Cultural Event Classification with a mean average precision of 0.767 on the test set.
Males' trust and mistrust of females in Muslim matrimonial sites

Purpose – The aim of this study is to examine interpersonal trust in Muslim matrimonial sites (MMS) from a male perspective. Specifically how users perceive interpersonal trust in MMS; what are the signs of lack of trust in MMS (if any); and what strategies do users adopt to handle the lack of trust in MMS. Design/methodology/approach – This empirical qualitative study used ethnographic techniques to collect data. In addition to briefly observing five MMS, the study conducted semi-structured interviews with ten participants, who were all males, between the ages of 25-35, and residing in different locations, including the USA, the UK, the UAE, Australia and Bahrain. While the interviews focused on participants' experience in MMS, the analysis of these interviews focused on the issue of trust in these sites. Findings – The analysis has revealed that participants associated trust with “risk taking”, “reliance” on one's abilities, “self-confidence” and honesty with the first three being the major themes that .
Mitochondrial Deoxynucleotide Pools in Quiescent Fibroblasts

Mitochondrial (mt) DNA depletion syndromes can arise from genetic deficiencies for enzymes of dNTP metabolism, operating either inside or outside mitochondria. MNGIE is caused by the deficiency of cytosolic thymidine phosphorylase that degrades thymidine and deoxyuridine. The extracellular fluid of the patients contains 10–20 μm deoxynucleosides leading to changes in dTTP that may disturb mtDNA replication. In earlier work, we suggested that mt dTTP originates from two distinct pathways: (i) the reduction of ribonucleotides in the cytosol (in cycling cells) and (ii) intra-mt salvage of thymidine (in quiescent cells). In MNGIE and most other mtDNA depletion syndromes, quiescent cells are affected. Here, we demonstrate in quiescent fibroblasts (i) the existence of small mt dNTP pools, each usually 3–4% of the corresponding cytosolic pool; (ii) the rapid metabolic equilibrium between mt and cytosolic pools; and (iii) the intra-mt synthesis and rapid turnover of dTTP in the absence of DNA replication. Between 0.1 and 10 μm extracellular thymidine, intracellular thymidine rapidly approaches the extracellular concentration. We mimic the conditions of MNGIE by maintaining quiescent fibroblasts in 10–40 μm thymidine and/or deoxyuridine. Despite a large increase in intracellular thymidine concentration, cytosolic and mt dTTP increase at most 4-fold, maintaining their concentration for 41 days. Other dNTPs are marginally affected. Deoxyuridine does not increase the normal dNTP pools but gives rise to a small dUTP and a large dUMP pool, both turning over rapidly. We discuss these results in relation to MNGIE.
A Study of YouTube Recommendation Graph Based on Measurements and Stochastic Tools

The Youtube recommendation is one the most important view source of a video. In this paper, we focus on the recommendation system in boosting the popularity of videos. We first construct a graph that captures the recommendation system in Youtube and study empirically the relationship between the number of views of a video and the average number of views of the videos in its recommendation list. We then consider a random walker on the recommendation graph, i.e. a random user that browses through videos such that the video it chooses to watch is selected randomly among the videos in the recommendation list of the previous video it watched. We study the stability properties of this random process and we show that the trajectory obtained does not contain cycles if the number of videos in the recommendation list is small (which is the case if the computer's screen is small).
Tribocorrosion of Passive Materials: A Review on Test Procedures and Standards

This paper reviews the most recent available literature relating to the electrochemical techniques and test procedures employed to assess tribocorrosion behaviour of passive materials. Over the last few decades, interest in tribocorrosion studies has notably increased, and several electrochemical techniques have been adapted to be applied on tribocorrosion research. Until 2016, the only existing standard to study tribocorrosion and to determine the synergism between wear and corrosion was the ASTM G119. In 2016, the UNE 112086 standard was developed, based on a test protocol suggested by several authors to address the drawbacks of the ASTM G119 standard. Current knowledge on tribocorrosion has been acquired by combining different electrochemical techniques. This work compiles different test procedures and a combination of electrochemical techniques used by noteworthy researchers to assess tribocorrosion behaviour of passive materials. A brief insight is also provided into the electrochemical techniques and studies made by tribocorrosion researchers.
Tools for 3D-object retrieval: Karhunen-Loeve transform and spherical harmonics

We present tools for 3D object retrieval in which a model, a polygonal mesh, serves as a query and similar objects are retrieved from a collection of 3D objects. Algorithms proceed first by a normalization step (pose estimation) in which models are transformed into a canonical coordinate frame. Second, feature vectors are extracted and compared with those derived from normalized models in the search space. Using a metric in the feature vector space nearest neighbors are computed and ranked. Objects thus retrieved are displayed for inspection, selection, and processing. For the pose estimation we introduce a modified Karhunen-Loeve transform that takes into account not only vertices or polygon centroids from the 3D models but all points in the polygons of the objects. Some feature vectors can be regarded as samples of functions on the 2-sphere. We use Fourier expansions of these functions as uniform representations allowing embedded multi-resolution feature vectors. Our implementation demonstrates and visualizes these tools.
Effective return-to-work interventions after acquired brain injury: A systematic review

Abstract Objective: To gather knowledge about effective return-to-work (RTW) interventions for patients with acquired brain injury (ABI). Methods: A database search was performed in PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library using keywords and Medical Subject Headings. Studies were included if they met inclusion criteria: adult patients with non-progressive ABI, working pre-injury and an intervention principally designed to improve RTW as an outcome. The methodological quality of included studies was determined and evidence was assessed qualitatively. Results: Twelve studies were included, of which five were randomized controlled trials and seven were cohort studies. Nine studies had sufficient methodological quality. There is strong evidence that work-directed interventions in combination with education/coaching are effective regarding RTW and there are indicative findings for the effectiveness of work-directed interventions in combination with skills training and education/coaching. Reported components of the most effective interventions were tailored approach, early intervention, involvement of patient and employer, work or workplace accommodations, work practice and training of social and work-related skills, including coping and emotional support. Conclusion and implications: Effective RTW interventions for patients with ABI are a combination of work-directed interventions, coaching/education and/or skills training. These interventions have the potential to facilitate sustained RTW for patients with ABI.