Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NFA split architecture for fast regular expression matching

Many hardware architectures have been designed to accelerate regular expression matching in network security devices, but most of them can achieve high throughput only for strings or small sets of regular expressions. We propose new NFA Split architecture which reduces the amount of consumed FPGA resources in order to match larger set of regular expressions. New algorithm is introduced to find non-collision sets of states and determine part of nondeterministic automaton which can be mapped to the memory based architecture. For all analysed sets of regular expressions, the algorithm was able to find non-collision sets with 67.8 % of states in average and reduces the amount of consumed flip-flops to 37.6 % and look-up tables to 63.9 % in average.
Some Risk Factors of Chronic Functional Constipation Identified in a Pediatric Population Sample from Romania

We conducted an observational study over a 1-year period, including 234 children aged 4–18 years and their caregivers and a matching control group. 60.73% of the children from the study group were males. Average age for the onset of constipation was 26.39 months. The frequency of defecation was 1/4.59 days (1/1.13 days in the control group). 38.49% of the patients in the sample group had a positive family history of functional constipation. The majority of children with functional constipation come from single-parent families, are raised by relatives, or come from orphanages. Constipated subjects had their last meal of the day at later hours and consumed fast foods more frequently than the children in the control sample. We found a statistically significant difference between groups regarding obesity/overweight and constipation (χ 2 = 104.94, df = 2, p < 0.001) and regarding physical activity and constipation (χ 2 = 18.419; df = 3; p < 0.001). There was a positive correlation between the number of hours spent watching television/using the computer and the occurrence of the disease (F = 92.162, p < 0.001, and 95% Cl). Children from broken families, with positive family history, defective dietary habits, obesity and sedentary behavior, are at higher risk to develop chronic functional constipation.
Simulation of the climate impact of Mt. Pinatubo eruption using ECHAM5 – Part 1: Sensitivity to the modes of atmospheric circulation and boundary conditions

Abstract. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in June 1991 was one of the strongest volcanic eruptions in the 20th century and this well observed eruption can serve as an important case study to understand the subsequent weather and climate changes. In this paper, the most comprehensive simulations to date of the climate impact of Mt. Pinatubo eruption are carried out with prescribed volcanic aerosols including observed SSTs, QBO and volcanically induced ozone anomalies. This is also the first attempt to include all the known factors for the simulation of such an experiment. Here, the climate response is evaluated under different boundary conditions including one at a time, thereby, investigating the radiative and dynamical responses to individual and combined forcings by observed SSTs, QBO and volcanic effects. Two ensembles of ten members each, for unperturbed and volcanically perturbed conditions were carried out using the middle atmosphere configuration of ECHAM5 general circulation model. Our results show that the simulated climate response that may arise solely from aerosol forcing in lower stratospheric temperature is insensitive to the boundary conditions in the tropics and does not show some observed features such as the temperature signature of the QBO phases. Also, statistically significant positive anomalies in the high latitudes in NH winter of 1991/92 seen in our model simulations with prescribed observed SST and QBO phases as boundary conditions are consistent with the observations. To simulate realistically the lower stratospheric temperature response, one must include all the known factors. The pure QBO and ocean signatures in lower stratospheric temperature are simulated consistently with earlier studies. The indirect effect of the volcanic aerosols manifested as the winter warming pattern is not simulated in the ensemble mean of the experiments. Our analysis also shows that the response to El Nino conditions is very strong in the model and that it partially masks the effects due to volcanic forcing.
A MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATION OF HEAT CONDUCTION OF A FINITE LENGTH SINGLE-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBE

Heat conduction of finite-length single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) was simulated by the molecular dynamics method with Tersoff-Brenner bond order potential. Temperature at each end of an SWNT was controlled by the phantom technique, and the thermal conductivity was calculated with Fourier’s law from the measured temperature gradient and the energy budgets in phantom molecules. The measured thermal conductivity did not converge to a finite value with increase in tube length up to 404 nm, but an interesting power law relation was observed. The phonon density of states and photon dispersion relations were directly extracted from simulation results for further analysis of heat conduction mechanism based on the phonon concept.
Markets with Strategic Multi-minded Mediators

We consider the design of mechanisms for multi-sided exchanges that interact with strategic players-some of which have multi-dimension strategic spaces or are represented by mediators. Players act to optimize their own utilities. The mechanism designer, on the other hand, aims to optimize a social goal, i.e., the gain from trade. As the mediators control the information flow from their players to the mechanism, the mechanism faces strategic behavior not only from the players but also from mediators: a mediator acts strategically to maximize utility on behalf of the players he represents. In particular, we focus on one example of the above setting which is motivated by the foreseeable future form of online advertising. Online advertising currently supports some of the most important Internet services, including: search, social media and user generated content sites. To overcome privacy concerns, it has been suggested to introduce user information markets through information brokers into the online advertising ecosystem. Such markets give users control over which data get shared in the online advertising exchange. We describe a model for the above foreseeable future form of online advertising, and design two mechanisms for the exchange of this model: a deterministic mechanism which is related to the vast literature on mechanism design through trade reduction and allows players with a multi-dimensional strategic space, and a randomized mechanism which can handle a more general version of the model.
The Steroid Effect on the Blood-Ocular Barrier Change Induced by Triolein Emulsion as seen on Contrast-Enhanced MR Images

Objective The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of dexamethasone on the damaged blood-ocular barrier caused by triolein emulsion, using contrast-enhanced MR imaging. Materials and Methods An emulsion of 0.1-mL triolein in 20 mL of saline was infused into the carotid arteries of 32 cats, 12 cats were placed in the treatment group and 18 cats were placed in the Control group. Thirty minutes after the infusion of triolein emulsion, a set of orbital pre- and post-contrast T1-weighted MR images (T1WIs) were obtained. Infusion of 10 mg/kg dexamethasone into the ipsilateral carotid artery of each of the cats in the treatment group cats and 20 mL saline in each of the cats in the control group was given. A second set of pre- and post-contrast orbital T1WIs were obtained three hours following triolein emulsion infusion. Qualitative analysis was performed for the the anterior chamber (AC), the posterior chamber (PC), and in the vitreous humor of the ipsilateral and contralateral eyes. The signal intensity ratios of the ipsilateral eye over the contralateral eye were quantitatively evaluated in the three ocular chambers on the first and second set of T1WIs, and were then statistically compared. Results Qualitatively, the AC, the PC or the vitreous did not show immediate contrast enhancement on the first and the second set of post-contrast T1WIs. However, the AC and the PC showed delayed contrast enhancement for both groups of cats on the second pre-contrast T1WIs. No enhancement or minimally delayed enhancement was seen for the vitreous humor. Quantitatively, the signal intensity ratios in the PC of the treatment group of cats were statistically lower than the ratios of the control group of cats for the second set of T1WIs (p = 0.037). The AC and vitreous showed no statistically significant difference between the feline treatment group and control group (p > 0.05). Conclusion Contrast-enhanced MR images revealed increased vascular permeability in the PC of the eye after infusion of triolein emulsion. Dexamethasone seems to decrease the breakdown of the blood-aqueous barrier in the PC.
Model-based Sketching and Recovery with Expanders

Linear sketching and recovery of sparse vectors with randomly constructed sparse matrices has numerous applications in several areas, including compressive sensing, data stream computing, graph sketching, and combinatorial group testing. This paper considers the same problem with the added twist that the sparse coefficients of the unknown vector exhibit further correlations as determined by a known sparsity model. We prove that exploiting model-based sparsity in recovery provably reduces the sketch size without sacrificing recovery quality. In this context, we present the model-expander iterative hard thresholding algorithm for recovering model sparse signals from linear sketches obtained via sparse adjacency matrices of expander graphs with rigorous performance guarantees. The main computational cost of our algorithm depends on the difficulty of projecting onto the model-sparse set. For the tree and group-based sparsity models we describe in this paper, such projections can be obtained in linear time. Finally, we provide numerical experiments to illustrate the theoretical results in action.
Attitudes toward intimate partner “honor”-based violence in India, Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan

Although intimate partner violence (IPV) and “honor”-based violence (HBV) are major concerns throughout the world, little research has investigated the acceptance of these forms of abuse outside of the West. The purpose of this paper is to therefore respond to this gap in the literature by exploring attitudes toward HBV in a fictional depiction of IPV across four Asian samples: India, Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan. ,Participants (n=579) read a hypothetical scenario in which a husband, despite his own marital infidelity, verbally abuses and physically assaults his wife after discovering that she has been unfaithful. Participants then completed a questionnaire that assessed perceptions of damage to the husband’s honor, approval of intimate partner HBV against the wife, and perceptions of both the victim-wife and the perpetrator-husband. ,The findings revealed that more males than females, across all four nations, were endorsing of honor-adhering attitudes in response to the perceived threat to the husband’s reputation resulting from the wife’s infidelity. Additionally, of the four samples, Pakistani participants were the most approving and Malaysians least endorsing of honor-adhering attitudes. ,The results are discussed in relation to studies of honor-adherence in Asian populations. This study provides an original glimpse into the perceptions of intimate partner HBV in these not-often sampled nationalities.
An Intelligent Interface for Learning Content: Combining an Open Learner Model and Social Comparison to Support Self-Regulated Learning and Engagement

We present the Mastery Grids system, an intelligent interface for online learning content that combines open learner modeling (OLM) and social comparison features. We grounded the design of Mastery Grids in self-regulated learning and learning motivation theories, as well as in our past work in social comparison, OLM, and adaptive navigation support. The force behind the interface is the combination of adaptive navigation functionality with the mastery-oriented aspects of OLM and the performance-oriented aspects of social comparison. We examined different configurations of Mastery Grids in two classroom studies and report the results of analysis of log data and survey responses. The results show how Mastery Grids interacts with different factors, like gender and achievement-goal orientation, and ultimately, its impact on student engagement, performance, and motivation.
Domoic Acid Improves the Competitive Ability of Pseudo-nitzschia delicatissima against the Diatom Skeletonema marinoi

Because domoic acid, a neurotoxic secondary metabolite produced by marine diatoms in the genus Pseudo-nitzschia, is hypothesized to be part of a high affinity iron uptake system, we investigated whether domoic acid could improve the competitive ability of Pseudo-nitzschia delicatissima, and whether the availability of iron changed the outcome of competition experiments. We found that domoic acid had a slight negative effect on growth of the diatom Skeletonema marinoi when it was grown in monocultures. However, when S. marinoi was cultured with P. delicatissima the presence of domoic acid resulted in a reduction of S. marinoi cells by up to 38% and an increase in P. delicatissima cell numbers by up to 17% under iron replete conditions. Similar effects were not observed in low iron treatments. Domoic acid was not taken up by P. delicatissima cells. Overall, our results indicate that domoic acid can improve the competitive ability of Pseudo-nitzschia spp. and that iron is likely to be involved. This study provides an unusual example of indirect inhibition of competitor growth mediated by a secondary metabolite.
On the linear ranking problem for integer linear-constraint loops

In this paper we study the complexity of the Linear Ranking problem: given a loop, described by linear constraints over a finite set of integer variables, is there a linear ranking function for this loop? While existence of such a function implies termination, this problem is not equivalent to termination. When the variables range over the rationals or reals, the Linear Ranking problem is known to be PTIME decidable. However, when they range over the integers, whether for single-path or multipath loops, the complexity of the Linear Ranking problem has not yet been determined. We show that it is coNP-complete. However, we point out some special cases of importance of PTIME complexity. We also present complete algorithms for synthesizing linear ranking functions, both for the general case and the special PTIME cases.
ALADDIN: A locality aligned deep model for instance search

Most instance search systems are based on modeling local features. It remains a challenge to apply deep learning techniques into this task because of the asymmetrical similarity between the query region and dataset images. In this paper, we propose ALADDIN, A Locality Aligned Deep moDel for INstance search. This model deals with the asymmetrical similarity by searching query instances at the scale of aligned target regions instead of the whole image. Towards discriminative region representations, we utilize a deep convolutional network which captures both intra-class and inter-class distinctions of the regions. In addition, we propose a semi-supervised method to collect appropriate data to train the network. Extensive experiments confirm that our method is more suitable for generic instance search than most conventional methods, and outperforms the best CNNs-based method in both accuracy and efficiency.
Facilitating Participation: Teacher Roles in a Multiuser Virtual Learning Environment.

Airong Wang, Mid-Sweden University This paper reports on a task-based language teaching course in Second Life. The data set consists of transcribed recordings and a teacher interview. Focusing on how the teacher facilitated student participation, this paper aims to explore the discourse functions in the teacher language output and then to address the teacher roles in three different task phases. All the turns produced by the teacher and the students were counted, the teacher language output in the recordings was classified into 19 discourse function categories, and then all the discourse functions were classified into six teacher roles. The results show that the during-task phase was student output oriented. This study reveals that in the pre-task phase the teacher used the largest number of types and tokens of discourse functions, and played a significant technical and social role. In the during-task phase, the teacher focused on motivating students to participate, monitoring student activities, and providing task support. In the post-task phase, the teacher was a language guide. While the teacher roles that were most prominent varied in the three task phases, the teacher was found to play four roles consistently in the three task phases: monitor role, motivator role, language guide role, and social role.
Recognition, Cointernalization, and Recycling of an Avian Riboflavin Carrier Protein in Human Placental Trophoblasts

Absorption of riboflavin (RF) across membrane barriers is essential to cellular oxidation reduction processes. Riboflavin carrier protein (RCP), a 37-kDa secretory protein, is proposed to play an important role in RF absorption, although information on the mammalian ortholog remains unclear. This study alludes to the existence of a mammalian RF carrier protein and further characterizes its carrier role and fate using avian RCP in human placental trophoblast (BeWo), another mammalian cell line, monkey kidney (COS-1), and the avian control, chicken hepatic (LMH/2A) cells. The presence of RCP and its involvement in RF internalization was analyzed by immunofluorescence and immunobinding assays using chicken RCP (cRCP) antibodies. In the presence of anti-cRCP, cellular RF uptake is significantly decreased (5% of control) in BeWo cells. Kinetic analyses of intracellular accumulation of 125I-cRCP revealed a Jmax and Km of 28.56 ± 2.70 pmol/mg protein/min and 142.43 ± 82.16 nM, respectively, in BeWo cells and 75.14 ± 7.6 pmol/mg protein/min and 104.37 ± 23.96 nM in the species-specific control, LMH/2A cells. Subcellular fractionation studies revealed colocalization of both radiolabeled RF and cRCP within endosomal and lysosomal fractions, further elucidating RCP's role in trafficking RF through the cell. Following intracellular release of RF from the carrier complex, the protein is either subject to lysosomal breakdown or is conserved via recycling mechanisms for continued RF sequestration and uptake. In summary, mammalian placental trophoblasts exhibit specific carrier protein dependence that sequesters and essentially mediates RF internalization via the proposed receptor-mediated endocytic pathway.
The inlAB locus mediates the entry of Listeria monocytogenes into hepatocytes in vivo

The intracellular parasite Listeria monocytogenes is able to induce its internalization by cultured mammalian cells that are not normally phagocytic. This process requires the expression of the chromosomal locus inlAB. We studied the virulence of an inlAB mutant and of its parent in murine listeriosis. Irrespective of the route of inoculation, the inlAB mutant was severely attenuated for growth in the liver. The livers of mice inoculated with the inlAB mutant displayed much smaller infectious foci than the parent as early as 24 h after infection. Electron microscopy showed that these foci consisted of a few inflammatory cells, with few bacteria; bacteria were rarely found within hepatocytes. In contrast, foci in livers of mice inoculated with the parent consisted of islets of heavily infected hepatocytes that were infiltrated by numerous neutrophils; bacteria seemed intact within hepatocytes and damaged within neutrophils. A direct role of inlAB for the entry of L. monocytogenes into hepatocytes was confirmed in a cell infection system using the murine embryonic hepatocyte cell line TIB73. The inlAB mutant was approximately 20-fold less invasive in trans. The "invasion locus" inlAB contributes to protect L. monocytogenes from the host's innate defense mechanisms by promoting its entry into hepatocytes.
A taxonomy and current issues in multidatabase systems

A taxonomy of global information-sharing systems is presented, and the way in which multidatabase systems fit into the spectrum of solutions is discussed. The taxonomy is used as a basis for defining multidatabase systems. Issues associated with multidatabase systems are reviewed. Two major design approaches for multidatabases, global schema systems and multidatabase language systems, are described. Existing multidatabase projects and areas for further research are also discussed. <<ETX>>
Protective Effects of Rutin and Naringin in Testicular Ischemia-Reperfusion Induced Oxidative Stress in Rats

Introduction Testicular torsion and detorsion causes reperfusion injury which damages the testicular tissue and affects the quality of sperm. Deterioration in the quality of sperm worldwide is the recent scenario and one of its reasons is testicular ischemic/ reperfusion (IR) injury. Therefore the present study aims at producing new drugs for the treatment of testicular IR injury. Methods 42 animals were selected for the study and divided into 7 groups, each containing 6 rats. Bioflavonoids were tested for their efficacy in reversing the damage done to the testicular tissue by causing testicular torsion and detorsion in rats. As oxidative stress produced in the above condition causes tissue damage, MDA level was measured and antioxidant enzymes SOD and catalse were evaluated. Histological examination was conducted to find the extent of damage and the protective effect of rutin and naringin. One-way ANOVA and Tukey's post-hoc test were used for data analysis. A p-value<0.001 was considered statistically significant. Results MDA levels increased and antioxidant enzymes decreased drastically in the group of rats with testicular torsion and detorsion which clearly indicates a rise in oxidative stress (68% rise in the case of MDA and 20% and 16% decrease in SOD and catalase concentrations, respectively). Rutin and naringin-treated groups showed the beneficial effects of the medicinal drugs, particularly in higher doses. Rutin, 10 mg/kg, was effective when compared to naringin in providing protection. Compared to the animals in the control group, there was a 30% reduction in MDA levels and a 20% increment in SOD levels plus a five-fold increase in catalse in the rutin-treated group (10 mg/kg). Histological examination supported the above claims. Conclusion Oxidative stress in testicular injury affects the quality of sperm. Rutin and naringin in higher doses protected testicular tissue effectively. Further studies in this direction may prove beneficial.
Social dynamics from the bottom up: Agent-based models of social interaction

This article focuses on agent-based computational (ABC) modeling of social interaction. It begins with an overview of ABC modeling as a computational implementation of ‘methodological individualism’, the search for the microfoundations of social life in the actions of intentional agents. It then considers how the ABC method differs from an earlier generation of modeling approaches, including game theory, equation-based models of computer simulation (such as system dynamics), and multivariate linear models. It also discusses potential weaknesses of ABC modeling and proposes research strategies to address them. The article suggests that ABC modeling will lead to significant advances in the bottom-up approach to the study of social dynamics.