Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On-line analysis of the TCP acknowledgment delay problem

We study an on-line problem that is motivated by the networking problem of dynamically adjusting of acknowledgments in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). We provide a theoretical model for this problem in which the goal is to send acks at a time that minimize a linear combination of the cost for the number of acknowledgments sent and the cost for the additional latency introduced by delaying acknowledgments. To study the usefulness of applying packet arrival time prediction to this problem, we assume there is an oracle that provides the algorithm with the times of the next L arrivals, for some L ≥ 0. We give two different objective functions for measuring the cost of a solution, each with its own measure of latency cost. For each objective function we first give an O(n2)-time dynamic programming algorithm for optimally solving the off-line problem. Then we describe an on-line algorithm that greedily acknowledges exactly when the cost for an acknowledgment is less than the latency cost incurred by not acknowledging. We show that for this algorithm there is a sequence of n packet arrivals for which it is &OHgr; (***)-competitive for the first objective function, 2-competitive for the second function for L = 0, and 1-competitivefor the second function for L = 1. Next we present a second on-line algorithm which is a slight modification of the first, and we prove that it is 2-competitive for both objective functions for all L. We also give lower bounds on the competitive ratio for any deterministic on-line algorithm. These results show that for each objective function, at least one of our algorithms is optimal. Finally, we give some initial empirical results using arrival sequences from real network traffic where we compare the two methods used in TCP for acknowledgment delay with our two on-line algorithms. In all cases we examine performance with L = 0 and L = 1.
Dynamical evolution of star clusters in tidal fields

We report the results of a large set of N-body calculations aimed at studying the evolution of multimass star clusters in external tidal fields. Our clusters start with the same initial mass functions, but varying particle numbers, orbital types and density profiles. Our main focus is to study how the stellar mass function and other cluster parameters change under the combined influence of stellar evolution, two-body relaxation and the external tidal field. We find that the lifetimes of star clusters moving on similar orbits scale as T ∼ T x , where T rh is the relaxation time, and the exponent x depends on the initial concentration of the cluster and is around x ≈ 0.75. The scaling law does not change significantly if one goes from circular orbits to eccentric ones. From the results for the lifetimes, we predict that between 53 and 67 per cent of all Galactic globular clusters will be destroyed within the next Hubble time. Low-mass stars are preferentially lost and the depletion is strong enough to turn initially increasing mass functions into mass functions that decrease towards the low-mass end. The details of this depletion are insensitive to the starting condition of the cluster and can be characterized as a function of a single variable, such as, for example, the fraction of time spent until total cluster dissolution. The preferential depletion of low-mass stars from star clusters leads to a decrease of their mass-to-light ratios except for a short period close to final dissolution, when the mass fraction in the form of compact remnants starts to dominate. The fraction of compact remnants increases throughout the evolution. They are more strongly concentrated towards the cluster cores than main-sequence stars and their mass fraction in the centre can reach 95 per cent or more around and after core collapse. For a sample of Galactic globular clusters with well-observed parameters, we find a correlation between the observed slope of the mass function and the lifetimes predicted by us. It seems possible that Galactic globular clusters started with a mass function similar to what one observes for the average mass function of the Galactic disc and bulge.
Finite element modelling of a hybrid unreinforced masonry-reinforced concrete wall

: The combination of Unreinforced Masonry (URM) and Reinforced Concrete (RC) walls is widely used as bracing system in several countries. This paper deals with the implementation of a numerical model in a commercial finite element software package. The calibration process is described. The objective is to enhance the knowledge of the structural performance of mixed URM-RC systems and, in a subsequent stage, to optimise their design. In this study, we focus on the lateral bracing resistance under statically applied loads. The present numerical campaign fits within a larger project, which aims at optimising the general design of hybrid URM-RC solutions (i.e. the proportion of concrete vs. masonry) as well as the connections used in these hybrid solutions. The long-term objective of the project is the optimisation of the overall lateral load-bearing system. this case, the behaviour differs for the two in plane loading directions. For URM walls, an increased level of axial loads results in a decreased deformation capacity (Petry & Beyer 2014). This study aims at replicating the results of the numerical campaign presented by Paparo & Beyer (2013, 2015b), in view of further exploi-tation of the numerical model for optimising URM-RC structural solutions. The test specimen is presented in Figure 1. We will focus on the lateral bracing resistance under an increasing static load.
Bowen Fluorescence from the Companion Star in X1822–371

We present clear evidence for the motion of the companion star in the low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) X1822-371. We detect N III λ4640 emission moving in antiphase with the radial velocity curve of the neutron star and produced on the X-ray-heated hemisphere of the donor star. From the motion of this feature we derive a lower limit to the radial velocity semiamplitude of the companion star, K2 ≥ 300 ± 8 km s-1, which, combined with a previous determination of the inclination angle and the pulsar's radial velocity curve, yields M2 ≥ 0.36(2) M☉ and M1 ≥ 1.14(6) M☉. The He I λ4471 absorption line moves at lower velocities (≃225 km s-1) and with a -0.05 phase shift, suggesting a likely origin on the gas stream near the L1 point. In addition, we detect an S-wave emission of O VI λ3811 produced by illumination of the hot spot bulge by the central source. The Balmer lines are dominated by broad absorptions probably due to obscuration of the accretion disk by vertically extended cool material from the splash region and overflowing stream. We also derive a more accurate, and significantly different (compared to earlier work), systemic velocity of γ = -44 ± 5 km s-1, based on the motion of the He II λ4686 wings and Doppler tomography. This work confirms the power of imaging the companion stars in LMXBs and outbursting transients using the Bowen fluorescence transitions.
Thrombospondin-1 Type 1 Repeats in a Model of Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Transcript Profile and Therapeutic Effects

Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) is a matricellular protein with regulatory functions in inflammation and cancer. The type 1 repeats (TSR) domains of TSP-1 have been shown to interact with a wide range of proteins that result in the anti-angiogenic and anti-tumor properties of TSP-1. To ascertain possible functions and evaluate potential therapeutic effects of TSRs in inflammatory bowel disease, we conducted clinical, histological and microarray analyses on a mouse model of induced colitis. We used dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) to induce colitis in wild-type (WT) mice for 7 days. Simultaneously, mice were injected with either saline or one form of TSP-1 derived recombinant proteins, containing either (1) the three type 1 repeats of the TSP-1 (3TSR), (2) the second type 1 repeat (TSR2), or (3) TSR2 with the RFK sequence (TSR2+RFK). Total RNA isolated from the mice colons were processed and hybridized to mouse arrays. Array data were validated by real-time qPCR and immunohistochemistry. Histological and disease indices reveal that the mice treated with the TSRs show different patterns of leukocytic infiltration and that 3TSR treatment was the most effective in decreasing inflammation in DSS-induced colitis. Transcriptional profiling revealed differentially expressed (DE) genes, with the 3TSR-treated mice showing the least deviation from the WT-water controls. In conclusion, this study shows that 3TSR treatment is effective in attenuating the inflammatory response to DSS injury. In addition, the transcriptomics work unveils novel genetic data that suggest beneficial application of the TSR domains in inflammatory bowel disease.
An Analysis of Unsupervised Pre-training in Light of Recent Advances

Convolutional neural networks perform well on object recognition because of a number of recent advances: rectified linear units (ReLUs), data augmentation, dropout, and large labelled datasets. Unsupervised data has been proposed as another way to improve performance. Unfortunately, unsupervised pre-training is not used by state-of-the-art methods leading to the following question: Is unsupervised pre-training still useful given recent advances? If so, when? We answer this in three parts: we 1) develop an unsupervised method that incorporates ReLUs and recent unsupervised regularization techniques, 2) analyze the benefits of unsupervised pre-training compared to data augmentation and dropout on CIFAR-10 while varying the ratio of unsupervised to supervised samples, 3) verify our findings on STL-10. We discover unsupervised pre-training, as expected, helps when the ratio of unsupervised to supervised samples is high, and surprisingly, hurts when the ratio is low. We also use unsupervised pre-training with additional color augmentation to achieve near state-of-the-art performance on STL-10.
Elasticity and onset of frictional dissipation at a non–sliding multi–contact interface

We measure the elastic and dissipative responses of a multi‐contact interface, formed between the rough surfaces of two contacting macroscopic solids, submitted to a biased oscillating shear force. We evidence that, beyond a linear viscoelastic regime, observed at low shear amplitude, the interface response exhibits a dissipative component that corresponds to the onset of frictional dissipation. The latter regime exists, whereas the tangential force applied, far from the nominal static threshold, does not provoke any sliding. This result, akin to that of Mindlin for a single contact, leads us to extend his model of ‘microslip’ to the case of an interface composed of multiple microcontacts. While describing satisfactorily the elastic response, the model fails to account quantitatively for the observed energy dissipation, which, we believe, results from the fact that the key assumption of local Coulomb friction in Mindlin's model is not legitimate at the sub‐micrometre scale of the microslip zones within microcontacts between surface asperities.
Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion enhances transcriptional expression of endothelin-1 and vasoconstrictor ETB receptors via the protein kinase MEK-ERK1/2 signaling pathway in rat

Background Coronary artery remodelling and vasospasm is a complication of acute myocardial ischemia and reperfusion. The underlying mechanisms are complex, but the vasoconstrictor peptide endothelin-1 is suggested to have an important role. This study aimed to determine whether the expression of endothelin-1 and its receptors are regulated in the myocardium and in coronary arteries after experimental ischemia-reperfusion. Furthermore, we evaluated whether treatment with a specific MEK1/2 inhibitor, U0126, modified the expression and function of these proteins. Methods and findings Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into three groups: sham-operated, ischemia-reperfusion with vehicle treatment and ischemia-reperfusion with U0126 treatment. Ischemia was induced by ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery for 30 minutes followed by reperfusion. U0126 was administered before ischemia and repeated 6 hours after start of reperfusion. The contractile properties of isolated coronary arteries to endothelin-1 and sarafotoxin 6c were evaluated using wire-myography. The gene expression of endothelin-1 and endothelin receptors were measured using qPCR. Distribution and localization of proteins (pERK1/2, prepro-endothelin-1, endothelin-1, and endothelin ETA and ETB receptors) were analysed by Western blot and immunohistochemistry. We found that pERK1/2 was significantly augmented in the ischemic area 3 hours after ischemia-reperfusion; this correlated with increased ETB receptor and ET-1 gene expressions in ischemic myocardium and in coronary arteries. ETB receptor-mediated vasoconstriction was observed to be increased in coronary arteries 24 hours after ischemia-reperfusion. Treatment with U0126 reduced pERK1/2, expression of ET-1 and ETB receptor, and ETB receptor-mediated vasoconstriction. Conclusions These findings suggest that the MEK-ERK1/2 signaling pathway is important for regulating endothelin-1 and ETB receptors in myocardium and coronary arteries after ischemia-reperfusion in the ischemic region. Inhibition of the MEK-ERK1/2 pathway may provide a novel target for reducing ischemia-reperfusion damage in the heart.
A Modified Differential Evolution Algorithm trained Pi-Sigma Neural Network for Pattern Classification

In this paper a modified differential evolution (DE) algorithm trained Pi-Sigma network (PSN) is used for classification. The used DE algorithm is a modification of traditional DE/rand/1/bin algorithm and novel mutation as well as crossover strategies are followed considering both exploration and exploitation. The performance of proposed methodology for pattern classification is evaluated through three well-known real world classification problems from UCI machine learning data library. The results obtained from the proposed method for classification is compared with results obtained by applying the two most popular variants of differential evolution algorithm (DE/rand/1/bin and DE/best/1/bin) and Chemical Reaction Optimization (CRO) algorithm. It is observed that the proposed method provides better classification accuracy than that of other methods. Index Terms—Differential Evolution, Higher Order Neural Network, Pi-Sigma Network, Classification.
Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy to Index Temporal Changes in Affect in Realistic Human-robot Interactions

Recent work in HRI found that prefrontal hemodynamic activity correlated with participants’ aversions to certain robots. Using a combination of brain-based objective measures and survey-based subjective measures, it was shown that increasing the presence (co-located vs. remote interaction) and human-likeness of the robot engaged greater neural activity in the prefrontal cortex and severely decreased preferences for future interactions. The results of this study suggest that brain-based measures may be able to capture participants’ affective responses (aversion vs. affinity), and in a variety of interaction settings. However, the brain-based evidence of this work is limited to temporally-brief (6-second) post-interaction samples. Hence, it remains unknown whether such measures can capture affective responses over the course of the interactions (rather than post-hoc). Here we extend the previous analysis to look at changes in brain activity over the time course of more realistic human-robot interactions. In particular, we replicate the previous findings, and moreover find qualitative evidence suggesting the measurability of fluctuations in affect over the course of the full
Macrophage and T-Cell Gene Expression in a Model of Early Infection with the Protozoan Leishmania chagasi

Visceral leishmaniasis is a potentially fatal infectious disease caused by the protozoan parasite Leishmania infantum/chagasi in the New World, or by L. donovani or L. infantum/chagasi in the Old World. Infection leads to a variety of outcomes ranging from asymptomatic infection to active disease, characterized by fevers, cachexia, hepatosplenomegaly and suppressed immune responses. We reasoned that events occurring during the initial few hours when the parasite encounters cells of the innate and adaptive immune systems are likely to influence the eventual immune response that develops. Therefore, we performed gene expression analysis using Affymetrix U133Plus2 microarray chips to investigate a model of early infection with human monocyte-derived macrophages (MDMs) challenged with wild-type L. chagasi parasites, with or without subsequent co-culture with Leishmania-naïve, autologous T-cells. Microarray data generated from total RNA were analyzed with software from the Bioconductor Project and functional clustering and pathway analysis were performed with DAVID and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), respectively. Many transcripts were down-regulated by infection in cultures containing macrophages alone, and the pattern indicated a lack of a classically activated phenotype. By contrast, the addition of autologous Leishmania-naïve T cells to infected macrophages resulted in a pattern of gene expression including many markers of type 1 immune cytokine activation (IFN-γ, IL-6, IL-1α, IL-1β). There was simultaneous up-regulation of a few markers of immune modulation (IL-10 cytokine accumulation; TGF-β Signaling Pathway). We suggest that the initial encounter between L. chagasi and cells of the innate and adaptive immune system stimulates primarily type 1 immune cytokine responses, despite a lack of classical macrophage activation. This local microenvironment at the site of parasite inoculation may determine the initial course of immune T-cell development.
Cloud Computing: Solution to ICT in Higher Education in Nigeria

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have become commonplace entities in all aspects of life. Across the past twenty years the use of ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms of endeavour within business and governance. Within education, ICT has begun to have a presence but the value of ICT is not affordable. Unfortunately, there are some limitations confronting institutions in Nigeria from infusing ICT. The basic principle of cloud computing entails the reduction of in-house data centres and the delegation of a portion or all of the Information Technology infrastructure capability to a third party. This holds the promise of driving down cost while fostering innovation and promoting agility. Institutions of higher learning, such as Universities and Colleges, are the core of innovation through their advanced research and development. Subsequently, Higher Institutions may benefit greatly by harnessing the power of cloud computing, including cost cutting as well as all the above types of cloud services. This paper explores the application of cloud computing in higher education in Nigeria, issues with ICT in Nigeria and touches upon some aspired benefits as well as expected limitations of cloud computing.
Technological Assessment in Machining of CuSn10-C Powder Parts

The main objective of this paper was to investigate machinability and technological assessment of powder metallurgy (PM) parts, especially bushings made by PM process. The bushings are made of CuSn10-C powder. Machining of the PM bushings was performed under various technological parameters, such as a cutting speed, a depth of cut and a feed. The main objective was to achieve or improve surface roughness (Sa – 0.3 to 0.6 μm) of machined bushing. Surface roughness is one of the main parameters, in result of which satisfactory performance of the bushing is achieved. The values of technological parameters were changed starting from the suggested technological parameters by a tool manufacturer and were further modified on step-by-step basis by evaluation of surface roughness of each machined PM bushing. Moreover, for evaluation and characterization of surface roughness not only 2D profile roughness measurements were used, but also 3D surface roughness measurement methodologies were used additionally allowing to investigate correlation between these two types measurement techniques. The results showed that technological assessment might be achieved in several ways not only by one best result.
Examining Factors Associated With Program Completion Among Women Participants in a Statewide Drug Court Program

The study purpose was to examine factors affecting women in completing drug court. Participants were 212 women drug court participants selected via stratified random sampling (by county) from the larger Kentucky Drug Court participant population. Various secondary data sources were used (e.g., participant assessment, Management Information System), and multivariate logistic regression examining 17 independent variables showed 4 variables were significantly associated with program completion for women: employment at program assessment, intravenous opiate use, number of times hospitalized for psychological or emotional problems, and conviction of a misdemeanor-eligible violent crime before drug court. Study findings can be used by social workers and other practitioners to better understand women’s drug court participation and to identify ways to tailor program services for women’s unique needs.
Anatomical Analysis of Thumb Opponency Movement in the Capuchin Monkey (Sapajus sp)

Capuchin monkeys present a wide variety of manipulatory skills and make routine use of tools both in captivity and in the wild. Efficient handling of objects in this genus has led several investigators to assume near-human thumb movements despite the lack of anatomical studies. Here we perform an anatomical analysis of muscles and bones in the capuchin hand. Trapezo-metacarpal joint surfaces observed in capuchins indicate that medial rotation of metacarpal I is either absent or very limited. Overall, bone structural arrangement and thumb position relative to the other digits and the hand’s palm suggest that capuchins are unable to perform any kind of thumb opponency, but rather a ‘lateral pinch’ movement. Although the capuchin hand apparatus bears other features necessary for complex tool use, the lack thumb opposition movements suggests that a developed cognitive and motor nervous system may be even more important for high manipulatory skills than traditionally held.