Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probe-Aided MulTCP: an aggregate congestion control mechanism

An aggregate congestion control mechanism, namely Probe-Aided MulTCP (PA-MulTCP), is proposed in this paper. It is based on MulTCP,a proposal for enabling an aggregate to emulate the behavior of multiple concurrent TCP connections. The objective of PA-MulTCP is to ensure the fair sharing of the bottleneck bandwidth between the aggregate and other TCP or TCP-friendly flows while keeping lightweightness and responsiveness. Unlike MulTCP, there are two congestion window loops in PA-MulTCP, namely the probe window loop and the adjusting window loop.The probe window loop constantly probes the congestion situation and the adjusting window loop dynamically adjusts the congestion window size for the arriving and departing flows within the aggregate Our simulations demonstrate that PA-MulTCP is more stable and fairer than MulTCP over a wide range of the weight N in steady conditions as well as in varying congestion conditions. PA-MulTCP is also responsive to flow arrival/departure and thus reduces the latency of short-lived transfers. Furthermore, PA-MulTCP is lightweight, since it enjoys above advantages at the cost of only an extra probe window loop, which has a marginal influence on the implementation complexity. Finally, the design of PA-MulTCP decouples the congestion management from the other functionalities in the aggregate flow management. As a result, PA-MulTCP could be potentially applied to a wider range of scenarios, e.g. wireless TCP proxies, edge-to-edge overlays, QoS provisioning and mass data transport. TCP, Fairness, Congestion Control, Aggregate Flow Management
GENERATING THE PROSODY OF ATTITUDES

This paper presents a superpositional model of prosody where linguistic structures are directly encoded into the prosodic parameters via global melodic and rhythmic contours. This model is applied here to the generation of prosody specific to six common attitudes in French. Perceptual tests using high-quality TD-PSOLA re-synthesis show that predicted contours yield the same identification scores as natural stimuli.
Subducted carbonates, metasomatism of mantle wedges, and possible connections to diamond formation: An example from California

Abstract We investigated calcite globules and veins in two spinel-garnet peridotite xenoliths from the sub- Sierra Nevada mantle. The studied xenoliths were entrained in a Miocene (11 Ma) volcanic plug. These carbonates are associated spatially with silicate glass inclusions, suggesting that they are primary inclusions-inclusions that formed at high temperature in the mantle and not at or close to the Earth's surface. The host peridotites represent samples of the lithospheric mantle wedge beneath the Mesozoic California magmatic arc, as indicated by radiogenic isotopic ratios measured on clinopyroxene separates [87Sr/86Sr(11 Ma) = 0.7058-0.7061, εNd (11 Ma) = -1.9 to -0.7]. Mineral chemistry of the peridotite major phases is typical of a mantle section that was depleted of melt. The δ18O values of olivine and orthopyroxene from the two samples are also typical of mantle rocks (δ18O = 6-6.5‰). In contrast, calcite veins have δ18O of 18-20‰ and δ13C of -14‰, arguing for a subducted sedimentary origin for these carbonates. Presumably, the carbonates were expelled from the downgoing slab and fluxed into the overlying mantle wedge as CO2- or CO2-H2O-rich fluids or melts. The trace-element patterns of two analyzed calcite veins are typical of the arc signatures (e.g., depletions in high-fieldstrength elements) seen in calc-alkaline magmatic rocks worldwide. However, the cores of peridotite clinopyroxenes do not show that pattern, suggesting that the arc-like trace element signature was introduced via the recycled carbonate agent. A connection between mantle wedge carbonation and diamond formation in a subduction environment is proposed based on these observations.
Understanding Relations of Individual—Collective Learning in Work: A Review of Research

A review was conducted of literature addressing learning in work, focusing on relations between individual and collective learning published in nine journals during the period 1999—2004. The journals represent three distinct fields of management/ organization studies, adult education and human resource development; all publish material about workplace learning regularly. In total, 209 articles were selected for content analysis, containing a range of material including reports of empirical research to theoretical discussion. Eight themes of individual—collective learning were identified through inductive content analysis of this literature: individual knowledge acquisition, sense-making/reflective dialogue, levels of learning, network utility, individual human development, individuals in community, communities-of-practice and co-participation or co-emergence. The discussion highlights similar issues stated in the different journals about understanding individual—collective learning, the apparent lack of dialogue across the fields, the ontological and ideological differences among the themes of learning currently in circulation and the low frequency of analysis of power relations in the articles reviewed.
NovaSearch on Medical ImageCLEF 2013

This article presents the participation of the Center of Informatics and Information Technology group CITI in medical ImageCLEF 2013. This is our first participation and we submitted runs on the modality classification task, the ad-hoc image retrieval task and case retrieval task. We are developing a system to integrate textual and visual retrieval into a framework for multimodal retrieval. Our approach for multimodal case retrieval achieved best global performance using Segmented (6×6 grid) Local Binary Pattern (LBP) histograms and Segmented HSV histograms for images and Lucene with query expansion (using the first top 3 results). In modality classification we achieved one of the largest MAP gains in the multimodal classification task, resulting in the third best team result.
Genomic Analyses, Gene Expression and Antigenic Profile of the Trans-Sialidase Superfamily of Trypanosoma cruzi Reveal an Undetected Level of Complexity

The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi is the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, a highly debilitating human pathology that affects millions of people in the Americas. The sequencing of this parasite's genome reveals that trans-sialidase/trans-sialidase-like (TcS), a polymorphic protein family known to be involved in several aspects of T. cruzi biology, is the largest T. cruzi gene family, encoding more than 1,400 genes. Despite the fact that four TcS groups are well characterized and only one of the groups contains active trans-sialidases, all members of the family are annotated in the T. cruzi genome database as trans-sialidase. After performing sequence clustering analysis with all TcS complete genes, we identified four additional groups, demonstrating that the TcS family is even more heterogeneous than previously thought. Interestingly, members of distinct TcS groups show distinctive patterns of chromosome localization. Members of the TcSgroupII, which harbor proteins involved in host cell attachment/invasion, are preferentially located in subtelomeric regions, whereas members of the largest and new TcSgroupV have internal chromosomal locations. Real-time RT-PCR confirms the expression of genes derived from new groups and shows that the pattern of expression is not similar within and between groups. We also performed B-cell epitope prediction on the family and constructed a TcS specific peptide array, which was screened with sera from T. cruzi-infected mice. We demonstrated that all seven groups represented in the array are antigenic. A highly reactive peptide occurs in sixty TcS proteins including members of two new groups and may contribute to the known cross-reactivity of T. cruzi epitopes during infection. Taken together, our results contribute to a better understanding of the real complexity of the TcS family and open new avenues for investigating novel roles of this family during T. cruzi infection.
Efficient information collection protocols for sensor-augmented RFID networks

Similar to the revolutionary change that the barcode system brought to the retail industry, the RFID technologies are expected to revolutionize the warehouse and inventory management. After RFID tags are deployed to make the attached objects wirelessly identifiable, a natural next step is to invent new ways to benefit from this “infrastructure”. For example, sensors may be added to these tags to gather real-time information about the state of the objects or about the environment where these objects reside. This leads to the problem of designing efficient protocols to collect such information from the tags. It is a new problem that the existing work cannot solve well. In this paper, we first show that a straightforward polling solution will not be efficient. We then propose a single-hash information collection protocol that works much better than the polling solution. However, a wide gap still exists between the execution time of this protocol and a lower bound that we establish. Finally, we propose a multi-hash information collection protocol that further reduces the expected execution time to within 1.61 times the lower bound.
Multicultural Navigators and College-Bound High School Students’ Academic Achievement, Self-Efficacy for Learning, and Perceived Task-Value

MULTICULTURAL NAVIGATORS AND COLLEGE-BOUND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, SELF-EFFICACY FOR LEARNING, AND PERCEIVED TASK-VALUE Bernadine Pearson, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2009 Dissertation Director: Gary Galluzzo The purpose of this study was to explore how the presence of a multicultural navigator in the lives of college-bound middle and high school students enrolled in the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program affected their academic achievement (GPA), self-efficacy for learning, and perceived task-value. AVID is designed to increase first-generation college bound students’ preparedness for college (Swanson, Mehan & Hubbard, 1995). AVID staff members are school-based social models who transmit the codes required for college preparation. Multicultural navigators are people who provide access to the codes related to college preparation for first-generation college-bound students (Carter, 2005). Fifty-three students enrolled in the AVID elective class at one high school located in a rural school district responded to a demographic questionnaire and two scales, the Self-Efficacy for Learning Form (SELF) (Zimmerman & Kitsantas 2007) and the Self and task perceptions questionnaire (STPQ) (Eccles & Wigfield, 1994). The results of this study indicated that 100% of the students were able to identify at least one multicultural navigator. Further, 88% of the students in this study identified a multicultural navigator in AVID, or had parents/guardians who had gone to college. Of the students whose parents/guardians went to college, 61% identified a multicultural navigator not in the AVID program. No significant differences were found, however, there were several trends related to the results of this study, Those students who identified someone in AVID as their multicultural navigator scored higher on SELF than those who selected someone not in AVID as their multicultural navigator and those who identified their AVID teacher as their multicultural navigator scored higher on TaskValue, SELF, and GPA. However, the differences were not statistically significant. This study concludes with discussion of the implications related to preparing first-generation students for college, limitations of this study, and suggestions for future research.
Using Brain Data for Sentiment Analysis

We present the results of exploratory experiments using lexical valence extracted from brain using electroencephalography (EEG) for sentiment analysis. We selected 78 English words (36 for training and 42 for testing), presented as stimuli to 3 English native speakers. EEG signals were recorded from the subjects while they performed a mental imaging task for each word stimulus. Wavelet decomposition was employed to extract EEG features from the time-frequency domain. The extracted features were used as inputs to a sparse multinomial logistic regression (SMLR) classifier for valence classification, after univariate ANOVA feature selection. After mapping EEG signals to sentiment valences, we exploited the lexical polarity extracted from brain data for the prediction of the valence of 12 sentences taken from the SemEval-2007 shared task, and compared it against existing lexical resources.
Growth dynamics of gut microbiota in health and disease inferred from single metagenomic samples

Estimating bacterial growth dynamics The pattern of sequencing read coverage of bacteria in metagenomic samples reflects the growth rate. This pattern is predictive of growth because bacterial genomes are circular, with a single origin of replication. So during growth, copies of the genome accumulate at the origin. Korem et al. use the ratio of copy number at the origin to the copy number at the terminus to detect the actively growing species in a microbiome (see the Perspective by Segre). They could spot the difference between virulent and avirulent strains, population diurnal oscillations, species that are growing in irritable bowel disease, and what happens when a host's diet changes. Results were consistent in chemostats, in mice, and in human fecal samples. Science, this issue p. 1101; see also p. 1058 A new method provides a quantitative measure of the growth rate of multiple gut microbes in one go. [Also see Perspective by Segre] Metagenomic sequencing increased our understanding of the role of the microbiome in health and disease, yet it only provides a snapshot of a highly dynamic ecosystem. Here, we show that the pattern of metagenomic sequencing read coverage for different microbial genomes contains a single trough and a single peak, the latter coinciding with the bacterial origin of replication. Furthermore, the ratio of sequencing coverage between the peak and trough provides a quantitative measure of a species’ growth rate. We demonstrate this in vitro and in vivo, under different growth conditions, and in complex bacterial communities. For several bacterial species, peak-to-trough coverage ratios, but not relative abundances, correlated with the manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease and type II diabetes.
Comparison of laparoscopic and open colonic resection within fast-track and traditional perioperative care pathways: clinical outcomes and in-hospital costs

Background: This study examined short-term clinical outcomes and in-hospital costs of laparoscopic and open colonic resection within fast-track and traditional care pathways. Material and Methods: A case–control study was performed. From 2007 to 2009, 116 patients underwent laparoscopic or open colonic resection for benign or malignant disease within fast-track care pathway. The control group consisted of 116 age-, sex-, comorbidity-, type of surgery–, and diagnosis-matched patients who received a traditional perioperative care from 2000 to 2007. The main measures of outcome were postoperative hospital stay and in-hospital costs, with 30-day mortality, morbidity, reoperation, and readmission rates as secondary outcomes. Results: The study groups were well balanced for baseline characteristics. Postoperative hospital stay was shorter in the fast-track than in the control group: laparoscopic resection median 3 versus 5 days (p < 0.001) and open resection 4 versus 7 days (p < 0.001). In multivariate analysis fast-track care, laparoscopic surgery and complications were independent determinants affecting the length of hospital stay. Overall, there was a trend toward lower in-hospital costs in the fast-track group compared with the traditional care group, but the difference was not statistically significant. Open surgery within fast-track care was the least costly option compared to laparoscopic or open surgery within traditional care but not significantly so when compared with laparoscopy within fast-track care. Intake of solid food and bowel function recovered 1 day earlier in the fast-track group than in the control group (p < 0.001). Complications were more frequent after open surgery than after laparoscopic surgery (23.3% vs 11.0%, p = 0.012). Reoperation and readmission rates were similar between the study groups. Conclusion: Laparoscopy improves the efficiency of fast-track perioperative care without significantly increasing in-hospital costs.
Molecular Superbubbles and Outflows from the Starburst Galaxy NGC 2146

We present results from a deep (1 � = 5.7 mJy beam � 1 per 20.8 km s � 1 velocity channel) 12 CO(1–0) interferometric observation of the central 60 00 region of the nearby edge-on starburst galaxy NGC 2146, observed with the Nobeyama Millimeter Array. Two diffuse expanding molecular superbubbles and one molecular outflow were successfully detected. One molecular superbubble, with a size of � 1 kpc and an expansion velocity of � 50 km s � 1 , is located below the galactic disk; a second molecular superbubble, with a size of � 700 pc and an expansion velocity of � 35 km s � 1 , is also seen in the position–velocity diagram; the molecular outflow is located above the galactic disk with an extent of � 2 kpc, expanding with a velocity of up to � 200 km s � 1 . The molecular outflow has an arc-like structure, and is located at the front edge of the soft X-ray outflow. In addition, the kinetic energy (� 3 � 10 55 erg) and the pressure (� 1 � 10 � 12˙1 dyn cm � 2 ) of the molecular outflow are comparable to, or smaller than, that of the
Paradoxical effect of vagus nerve stimulation on heart rate in dogs.

In the anesthetized, open-chest dog, electrical stimulation of the cardiac ends of the transected cervical vagus nerves produced effects on heart rate and A-V transmission that were dependent upon the P-St interval, i.e., the-time from the beginning of the P wave to the beginning of the stimulus. When one vagal stimulus was delivered per cardiac cycle, the pacemaker response curve (curve of the P-P interval as a function of the P-St interval) was sinusoidal in configuration, with a maximum at a P-St interval of 135 msec and a minimum at 349 msec. The mean P-P interval was 568 msec, and the mean amplitude of the pacemaker response curve was 58 msec. In any given experiment, the range of P-P intervals encompassed by the pacemaker response curve defined a range of frequencies over which S-A nodal rhythm became synchronized with the activity in the vagus nerves. Over such a range, increases in the frequency of vagal stimulation evoked paradoxical increases in heart rate. On either side of this range of synchronization, vagal stimulation elicited pronounced rhythmic oscillations of P-P and P-R intervals. The frequency of such oscillations was equal to the difference between the vagal stimulation frequency and the mean heart rate. The oscillations in P-R interval were approximately 180° out of phase with the oscillations in P-P interval.
Activity of CpG Oligonucleotides Improve the Uptake and Immunostimulatory Sterically Stabilized Cationic Liposomes

KlinmanIhsan Gursel, Mayda Gursel, Ken J. Ishii and Dennis M.http://www.jimmunol.org/content/167/6/3324J Immunol€2001; 167:3324-3328; ;Referenceshttp://www.jimmunol.org/content/167/6/3324.full#ref-list-1This article cites 39 articles, 16 of which you can access for free at: Subscriptionshttp://jimmunol.org/subscriptionsInformation about subscribing to The Journal of Immunology is online at: Permissionshttp://www.aai. org/ji/copyright.htmlSubmit copyright permission requests at: Email Alertshttp://jimmunol.org/cgi/alerts/etocReceive free email-alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up at:
Effects of Magnesium Sulfate on Preterm Fetal Cerebral Blood Flow Using Doppler Analysis: A Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effects of maternal administration of magnesium sulfate on the fetal middle cerebral artery using Doppler. METHODS: This is a single-center ancillary study done in conjunction with a randomized, double-masked, placebo- controlled trial in 20 centers. Women at imminent risk of preterm delivery (n=2,241) were allocated randomly to receive magnesium sulfate or placebo. Doppler measurements of the fetal middle cerebral artery were obtained before blinded study-drug administration and subsequently at 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-hour intervals. Parameters studied included time-average velocity, peak systolic velocity, vessel diameter, heart rate, and calculated blood volume flow. A random-effects model with repeated-measures design was used for analysis. RESULTS: A total of 38 fetuses were studied: 18 received magnesium sulfate and 20 received placebo. Peak systolic velocity was significantly related to gestational age (P<.001). There were no differences between the study groups for middle cerebral artery peak systolic velocity, average velocity, vessel diameter, or calculated volume flow. However, fetal heart rate significantly decreased after treatment with magnesium sulfate. CONCLUSION: Magnesium sulfate had no significant effects on fetal cerebral blood flow analyzed using Doppler. The only parameter in the fetal cerebral circulation significantly modified by magnesium sulfate was the heart rate. The significance of this heart-rate change, vis-à-vis the neuroprotective effects of magnesium sulfate, is unknown. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, www.clinicaltrials. gov, NCT00014989. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: I
Anti-Immune Strategies of Pathogenic Fungi

Pathogenic fungi have developed many strategies to evade the host immune system. Multiple escape mechanisms appear to function together to inhibit attack by the various stages of both the adaptive and the innate immune response. Thus, after entering the host, such pathogens fight to overcome the immune system to allow their survival, colonization and spread to different sites of infection. Consequently, the establishment of a successful infectious process is closely related to the ability of the pathogen to modulate attack by the immune system. Most strategies employed to subvert or exploit the immune system are shared among different species of fungi. In this review, we summarize the main strategies employed for immune evasion by some of the major pathogenic fungi.