Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Challenges of Physical Implementations of RBMs

Restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) are powerful machine learning models, but learning and some kinds of inference in the model require sampling-based approximations, which, in classical digital computers, are implemented using expensive MCMC. Physical computation offers the opportunity to reduce the costof sampling by building physical systems whose natural dynamics correspond to drawing samples from the desired RBM distribution. Such a system avoids the burn-in and mixing cost of a Markov chain. However, hardware implementations of this variety usually entail limitations such as low-precision and limited range of the parameters and restrictions on the size and topology of the RBM. We conduct software simulations to determine how harmful each of these restrictions is. Our simulations are based on the D-Wave Two computer, but the issues we investigate arise in most forms of physical computation.Our findings suggest that designers of new physical computing hardware and algorithms for physical computers should focus their efforts on overcoming the limitations imposed by the topology restrictions of currently existing physical computers.
Calculations and Measurements of Raman Gain Coefficients of Different Fiber Types

Fiber Raman amplification using the transmission line is a promising technology to increase the repeater distance as well as the capacity of the communication systems. Because of the growing importance of fiber Raman amplification, it is desired to predict the magnitude and shape of the Raman gain spectrum from the doping level and refractive index profiles of different fiber designs. This thesis develops a method to predict the Raman gain coefficients and spectra for a pure silica core fiber and two different types of GeO2-doped silica fibers given their index profiles. An essential feature of the model is the inclusion of the variation in Raman gain coefficient over the mode field due to the variation in the Ge concentration across the fiber core. The calculated Raman gain coefficients were compared with measurements of the peak Raman gain on a stepindex GeO2-doped fiber and with published measurements from various sources. Agreement between the calculated and measured peak gain for the stepindex fiber was excellent. There was qualitative agreement with published measurements but there were significant differences between the calculated and published gain coefficients, which are not understood. Part of the work sought a way of predicting Raman gain coefficients from a standard gain curve given only the fiber type and the effective area. This approach appears promising for moderately-doped fibers with the proper choice of effective area.
The effect of clodronate and antioestrogens on bone loss associated with oestrogen withdrawal in postmenopausal women with breast cancer

In this study we report bone mineral density (BMD) changes during clodronate and antioestrogen treatment in women with breast cancer having discontinued hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at the time of operation compared to women who had not used HRT immediately before the operation. 61 postmenopausal women with operable breast cancer were treated with the adjuvant antioestrogen tamoxifen 20 mg or toremifene 60 mg daily for 3 years. All patients were randomized to clodronate (1.6 g daily orally) or control groups for 3 years. 23 patients had recently (recent users) and 38 never or not for at least 1 year before operation used HRT (non-users). BMD of lumbar spine and femoral neck were measured before antiresorptive therapy (antioestrogens and clodronate) and at 1, 2, 3 and 5 years thereafter. All patients were disease-free at the time of BMD measurements. Patients who had recently used HRT had more significant bone loss as compared to HRT non-users at 3 years in lumbar spine – 3.0% vs. + 1.2% (P< 0.001), but not in femoral neck – 0.4% vs. + 1.7% (P = 0.27). Adding 3-year clodronate treatment to antioestrogen therapy improved BMD marginally at 3 years: lumbar spine + 1.0% vs. –1.7% (P = 0.01) and femoral neck + 2.4% vs. –0.4% (P = 0.12). This was also seen at 5 years of follow-up, 2 years after termination of the antiresorptive therapy: HRT recent users vs. HRT non-users in lumbar spine –6.5% vs. +0.5% (P< 0.0001) and in femoral neck –4.8% vs. –1.5% (P = 0.38); and clodronate vs. controls in lumbar spine –1.0% vs. –3.2% (P = 0.06) and in femoral neck –0.1% vs. –5.2% (P = 0.001, respectively). The type of endocrine therapy (tamoxifen and toremifene) had no significant influence on BMD changes. We conclude from this study that postmenopausal women who have recently discontinued HRT experience more rapid bone loss than HRT non-users. Neither 3-year antioestrogen therapy alone nor antioestrogen together with clodronate could totally prevent the bone loss related to HRT withdrawal in lumbar spine, even though clodronate seemed to retard it. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign
Context Driven Label Fusion for segmentation of Subcutaneous and Visceral Fat in CT Volumes

Quantification of adipose tissue (fat) from computed tomography (CT) scans is conducted mostly through manual or semi-automated image segmentation algorithms with limited efficacy. In this work, we propose a completely unsupervised and automatic method to identify adipose tissue, and then separate Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue (SAT) from Visceral Adipose Tissue (VAT) at the abdominal region. We offer a three-phase pipeline consisting of (1) Initial boundary estimation using gradient points, (2) boundary refinement using Geometric Median Absolute Deviation and Appearance based Local Outlier Scores (3) Context driven label fusion using Conditional Random Fields (CRF) to obtain the final boundary between SAT and VAT. We evaluate the proposed method on 151 abdominal CT scans and obtain state-of-the-art 94% and 91% dice similarity scores for SAT and VAT segmentation, as well as significant reduction in fat quantification error measure.
Managing Cloud Service Provisioning and SLA Enforcement via Holistic Monitoring Techniques

Rapid technological developments in Information Technology (IT) and ubiquitous Internet access are causing serious challenges in service provisioning and resource management landscapes. Cloud computing is proving to be a reliable technology to address these challenges. Service provisioning in the Cloud relies on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) representing a contract signed between the customer and the service provider including non-functional requirements of the service specified as Quality of Service (QoS) and penalties in case of violations. Flexible and reliable management of resources and SLA agreements are of paramount importance to both Cloud providers and consumers. On the one hand, providers have to prevent SLA violations to avoid penalties and on the other hand, they have to ensure high resource utilization to prevent costly maintenance of unused resources. Although, there is a large body of work considering development of flexible and self-manageable Cloud computing infrastructures, there is still a lack of adequate monitoring infrastructures capable of predicting possible SLA violations. Most of the available monitoring systems rely either on Grid or service-oriented infrastructures, which are not directly compatible to Clouds due to the differences in resource usage models, or due to heavily network-oriented monitoring infrastructures. Furthermore, to achieve high resource utilization and more revenue, the providers must be able to schedule resources and deploy different user applications complying with the SLA objectives, and at the same time optimizing the performance of the applications. The current scheduling approaches in Clouds are tailored toward the usage of single SLA objectives, such as execution time in decision making. The design of a generalized scheduling algorithm for optimal mapping of an application with multiple SLA parameters to resources is yet to be investigated. Nevertheless, the idea of scheduling and deploying multiple applications on the same host brings a new set of challenges to the Cloud provider because he must enforce the SLA terms of each customer application independently. In this thesis, we propose a novel Cloud management infrastructure, which is based on holistic monitoring techniques and mechanisms for low-level resource metrics to high-level SLA mapping, application scheduling and deployment, and the ability to monitor multiple application executing on the same host. We present the design and implementation of these techniques. In a case study, we show the integration of knowledge management techniques into Cloud management infrastructures realizing autonomic behaviour and providing reactive action to prevent / correct the SLA violation situations. Finally, we present some evaluations to show the novelty of the contributed solutions.
AWHD for License Plate Character

In the paper a new method for the license plate character image matching is presented. There are many available methods for image matching, e.g., Hausdorff distance and wavelet transform based matching. We proposed an adaptive weighted Hausdorff (AWHD) distance matching algorithm, the results of our experiment showed that AWHD is time efficient, robust, and high recognition rate method.
Free Trehalose Accumulation in Dormant Mycobacterium smegmatis Cells and Its Breakdown in Early Resuscitation Phase

Under gradual acidification of growth medium resulting in the formation of dormant Mycobacterium smegmatis, a significant accumulation of free trehalose in dormant cells was observed. According to 1H- and 13C-NMR spectroscopy up to 64% of total organic substances in the dormant cell extract was represented by trehalose whilst the trehalose content in an extract of active cells taken from early stationary phase was not more than 15%. Trehalose biosynthesis during transition to the dormant state is provided by activation of genes involved in the OtsA-OtsB and TreY-TreZ pathways (according to RT-PCR). Varying the concentration of free trehalose in dormant cells by expression of MSMEG_4535 coding for trehalase we found that cell viability depends on trehalose level: cells with a high amount of trehalose survive much better than cells with a low amount. Upon resuscitation of dormant M. smegmatis, a decrease of free trehalose and an increase in glucose concentration occurred in the early period of resuscitation (after 2 h). Evidently, breakdown of trehalose by trehalase takes place at this time as a transient increase in trehalase activity was observed between 1 and 3 h of resuscitation. Activation of trehalase was not due to de novo biosynthesis but because of self-activation of the enzyme from the inactive state in dormant cells. Because, even a low concentration of ATP (2 mM) prevents self-activation of trehalase in vitro and after activation the enzyme is still sensitive to ATP we suggest that the transient character of trehalase activation in cells is due to variation in intracellular ATP concentration found in the early resuscitation period. The negative influence of the trehalase inhibitor validamycin A on the resuscitation of dormant cells proves the importance of trehalase for resuscitation. These experiments demonstrate the significance of free trehalose accumulation for the maintenance of dormant mycobacterial viability and the involvement of trehalose breakdown in early events leading to cell reactivation similar to yeast and fungal spores.
Detection of SiO emission from a massive dense cold core

We report the detection of the SiO (J= 2−1) transition from the massive cold dense core G333.125−0.562. The core remains undetected at wavelengths shorter than 70 μm and has compact 1.2-mm dust continuum. The SiO emission is localized to the core. The observations are part of a continuing multi-molecular line survey of the giant molecular cloud G333. Other detected molecules in the core include 13CO, C18O, CS, HCO+, HCN, HNC, CH3OH, N2H+, SO, HC3N, NH3, and some of their isotopes. In addition, from NH3 (1,1) and (2,2) inversion lines, we obtain a temperature of 13 K. From fitting to the spectral energy distribution we obtain a colour temperature of 18 K and a gas mass of 2 × 103 M⊙. We have also detected a 22-GHz water maser in the core, together with methanol maser emission, suggesting that the core will host massive star formation. We hypothesize that the SiO emission arises from shocks associated with an outflow in the cold core.
Auditor Expertise, Jurors’ Social Identities and Evaluations of Auditor Negligence

This paper employs Social Identity Theory to investigate the impact of auditor expertise and jurors’ identification with auditors on jurors’ perceptions of auditor negligence. Consistent with expectations, jurors who identified more strongly with auditors (strong identifiers) levied more lenient negligence judgments to auditors than weak identifiers. These findings suggest that lay jurors demonstrate the ability to empathize with auditors. However, the significant interaction between jurors’ social identities and the firm’s level of expertise suggests that the effects of jurors’ identities on negligence verdicts may be constrained by firm characteristics.
A Low Phase-Noise VCO Using an Electronically Tunable Substrate Integrated Waveguide Resonator

In this paper, an X -band low phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) using a novel electronically tunable substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) resonator is proposed and developed for RF/microwave applications on the basis of the substrate integrated circuits concept. In this case, the resonant frequency of the SIW cavity resonator is tuned by different dc-biasing voltages applied over a varactor coupled to the cavity. Measured results show that the tuning range of the resonator is about 630 MHz with an unloaded Q U of 138. Subsequently, a novel reflection-type low phase noise VCO is developed by taking advantage of the proposed tunable resonator. Measured results demonstrate a frequency tuning range of 460 MHz and a phase noise of 88 dBc/Hz at a 100-kHz offset over all oscillation frequencies. The VCO is also able to deliver an output power from 6.5 to 10 dBm. This type of VCO is very suitable for low-cost microwave and millimeter-wave applications.
Acoustic cues of stress and accent in Catalan

The goal of this paper is to examine the phonetic correlates of stress and accent in Catalan. We analyzed five acoustic correlates of stress (syllable duration, spectral balance, vowel quality, vowel pitch, and vowel intensity) in two stress conditions and in two accent conditions, which is to say, in stressed and unstressed syllables in both accented and unaccented environments (that is, appositions in sentences such as Vol la vela, la vella ‘(S)he wants the sail, the old sail’ vs. right-dislocated subjects in Vol la vela, la vella ‘(S)he wants the sail, the old lady’. In keeping with the findings of Slujter & collaborators on Dutch and on English [1], [2], [3], and Campbell & Beckman on English [4], Catalan reveals systematic differences in the acoustic characterization of the accent and stress dimensions. Specifically, syllable duration, spectral balance, and vowel quality are reliable acoustic correlates of stress differences, while accentual differences are acoustically marked by intensity and pitch cues.
The Incidence of Nominal and Real Wage Rigidity: An Individual-Based Sectoral Approach

This paper presents estimates based on individual data of downward nominal and real wage rigidities for thirteen sectors in Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Portugal. Our methodology follows the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project, whereby resistance to nominal and real wage cuts is measured through departures of observed individual wage change histograms from an estimated counterfactual wage change distribution that would have prevailed in the absence of rigidity. We evaluate the role of worker and firm characteristics in shaping wage rigidities. We also confront our estimates of wage rigidities to structural features of the labour markets studied, such as the wage bargaining level, variable pay policy and the degree of product market competition. We find that the use of firm-level collective agreements in countries with rather centralized wage formation reduces the degree of real wage rigidity. This finding suggests that some degree of decentralization within highly centralized countries allows firms to adjust wages downwards, when business conditions turn bad.
Global bounds for the Lyapunov exponent and the integrated density of states of random Schrödinger operators in one dimension

In this paper we prove an upper bound for the Lyapunov exponent γ(E) and a two-sided bound for the integrated density of states N(E) at an arbitrary energy E>0 of random Schrodinger operators in one dimension. These Schrodinger operators are given by potentials of identical shape centred at every lattice site but with non-overlapping supports and with randomly varying coupling constants. Both types of bounds only involve scattering data for the single-site potential. They show, in particular, that both γ(E) and N(E)-(E)1/2/π decay at infinity at least like 1/(E)1/2. As an example we consider the random Kronig-Penney model.
Unskilled workers in an economy with skill-biased technology

This paper contributes to the search theory of unemployment by endogenously generating matching functions for skilled and unskilled workers from a wage-posting game. The model is capable of producing a positive skill premium and a positive wage differential among homogenous unskilled workers. The skill premium arises from a skill-biased technology; the wage differential among unskilled workers sustains because a lower wage is compensated by a higher change of getting the job. The model provides useful explanations for the observed dynamics patterns of within-skill and between-skill wage differentials in the 1970s and 1980s and for the relative cyclical volatility of hours of worker by different skill groups of workers.
Politics and macroeconomic performance in the OECD countries

This paper provides an overview of the major macroeconomic problems that have confronted the OECD countries during the last four decades. It also explores some leading arguments regarding the political bases of these problems. An extensive account of the experiences of these countries in terms of five major macroeconomic problem areas, growth, employment, price stability, external balances, and equality, is provided. The relative performance of these countries is given particular emphasis. An attempt is made to place their economic progress and difficulties into a broader historical perspective and to provide some background with respect to related developments. This is followed by a discussion of three of the leading arguments regarding the political basis of economic performance (social consensus, class-based partisan politics, and government failure). An evaluation of the empirical validity of these arguments is provided. None of the three arguments (and their variants) garnered evidence that was uniformly supportive. Aside from somemodest support for the coherence version of the class-based partisan politics model, the effects of political factors on growth appear to be nil. The existence of tradeoffs between left and right preferences in terms of other macroeconomic outcomes, specifically with respect to unemployment and inflation, seem not to manifest themselves in the presence of social consensus. Both the desired outcome of full employment and price stability can be achieved under conditions of social consensus. Interestingly, such consensus will do nothing to advance the goal of income equalization. Partisan politics does seem to matter in most of the economic problem areas examined. There is some evidence that a strong left and labor will bring about lower unemployment and greater equality at the cost of higher inflation and a poorer performance on the external account.
SUMMARY OF SAFETY AND EFFECTIVENESS DATA (SSED)

The current PMA was submitted for an indication for the therascreen PIK3CA RGQ PCR Kit to identify 11 mutations in phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase catalytic subunit alpha (PIK3CA) gene (Exon 7: C420R; Exon 9: E542K, E545A, E545D [1635G>T only], E545G, E545K, Q546E, Q546R; and Exon 20: H1047L, H1047R, H1047Y) from circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) isolated from K2EDTA plasma from breast cancer patients who may be eligible for treatment with PIQRAY® (alpelisib).
Activation of metabotropic glutamate receptors produces reciprocal regulation of ionotropic glutamate and GABA responses in the nucleus of the tractus solitarius of the rat

Whole-cell voltage-clamp recordings were made in thin transverse slices from neurons of the dorsomedial subdivision of the nucleus of the tractus solitarius (NTS) of the rat. Cells were exposed to either the ionotropic glutamate receptor agonist (R, S)-alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5- methylisoxazole-4-propionate (AMPA) or the GABAA receptor agonist muscimol via pressure ejection directed at the cell soma. The metabotropic glutamate receptor agonist 1S,3R-1-aminocyclopentane-1,3- dicarboxylate (1S,3R-ACPD; 2–100 microM) reversibly depressed muscimol- evoked currents. Conversely, 1S,3R-ACPD reversibly potentiated AMPA- evoked currents. High-frequency stimulation of the tractus solitarius in the presence of 6,7-dinitroquinoxaline-2,3-dione and D-2-amino-5- phosphonopentanoic acid also produced a reversible depression of muscimol-evoked currents that was occluded in the presence of 100 microM 1S,3R-ACPD. 8-Br-cGMP or brain-derived natriuretic peptide mimicked the effects of 1S,3R-ACPD on AMPA and muscimol currents. However, agents that mimicked the actions of cAMP or diacylglycerol did not. These findings indicate that metabotropic glutamate receptors may mediate multiple components of excitatory transmission in the NTS including modulation of glutamate and GABA-activated ion channels.
Parental involvement in the learning of adolescents with and without ADHD

This study examined parental involvement in adolescents' learning of parents of 108 adolescents 13- to 18-years of age (54 mothers of adolescents with ADHD, 44 mothers of adolescents without ADHD; 42 fathers of adolescents with ADHD and 35 fathers of adolescents without ADHD). Compared to mothers and fathers of adolescents without ADHD, both mothers and fathers of adolescents with ADHD reported lower self-efficacy in their ability to help their teens on the Parent Involvement Project Questionnaire-Modified (PIPQ-M). On the Parental Support for Learning Scale (PSLS), mothers of adolescents with ADHD perceived themselves as being less supportive and having fewer aspirations regarding their adolescents' future, compared with mothers of adolescents without ADHD. There were no differences between parents of adolescents with and without ADHD in any other aspects of involvement beliefs, experiences, and behaviors according to parent and adolescent report. Implications for school psychology practice are discussed.