Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
100,000,000 taps: analysis and improvement of touch performance in the large

Touchscreens became the dominant input device for smartphones. Users' touch behaviour has been widely studied in lab studies with a relative low number of participants. In contrast, we published a game in the Android Market that records the touch behaviour when executing a controlled task to collect large amounts of touch events. Players' task is to simply touch circles appearing on the screen. Data from 91,731 installations has been collected and players produced 120,626,225 touch events. We determined the error rates for different target sizes and screen locations. The amount of data enabled us to show that touch positions are systematically skewed. A compensation function that shifts the users' touches to reduce the amount of errors is derived from the data and evaluated by publishing an update of the game. The independent-measures experiment with data from 12,201 installations and 15,326,444 touch events shows that the function reduces the error rate by 7.79%. We argue that such a compensation function could improve the touch performance of virtually every smartphone user.
Effect of inoculating addition on machinability of gray cast iron

灰色的生铁与 FeSi75+RE 和 FeSi75+Sr 种体被接种。 在被使用前后的练习的顶角度的变化被用来评估灰色的生铁的 machinability。 在汽缸体使用的灰色的生铁的机械性质， machinability 和敏感上的 FeSi75+RE 和 FeSi75+Sr 种体的效果被调查。 试验性的结果证明与 60%FeSi75+40% RE 种体对待的灰色的生铁与好坚硬一起在大约 295 MPa 一致地展出了张力的力量并且改善冶金质量。 当与 20%FeSi75+80% Sr 种体接种的灰色的生铁展出了最好的 machinability，最低剖面图敏感和最少的 microhardness 差别时。 工具胁腹随矩阵的 microhardness 差别的增加相应地增加的练习穿，在灰色的生铁的 machinability 上显示矩阵的同质的大效果。
An n-of-one RCT for intravenous immunoglobulin G for inflammation in hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsy (HNPP)

Hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsy (HNPP; tomaculous neuropathy) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder caused by a loss of function of the peripheral myelin protein 22 gene ( PMP22 ; OMIM #601097) for which no curative treatment exists. Symptoms consist of recurrent painless episodes of focal sensory loss and muscle weakness, which are often provoked by nerve compression and resolve spontaneously within days to months.1 In this report, we describe the case of a female patient with HNPP who initially presented with symptoms of a painful neuropathy which were successfully treated with intravenous immunoglobulin G (IVIg), and the results of a double-blind, placebo-controlled n-of-one trial to assess the effectiveness of IVIg in this patient. In 2002, a 35-year-old female patient presented with a 15-month history of neuropathic pain in the right leg, and recurring episodes of weakness and sensory loss in the legs which resolved spontaneously after several weeks. Her medical and family history was unremarkable. Physical examination showed mild proximal weakness of the left leg (Medical Research Council (MRC) grade 4), severe weakness of the left foot extensors (MRC 0–2), hypoalgesia of the left hand and lower leg, and reduced tendon reflexes with absent Achilles reflexes. All additional investigations were normal, except electromyographic (EMG) studies which showed bilateral demyelinating conduction blocks at ulnar nerve compression sites, prolonged distal motor latencies of the ulnar, tibial, peroneal and median nerves, and absent F-waves in peroneal and right tibial nerves, …
Genetic characterization of pilin glycosylation and phase variation in Neisseria meningitidis

Pili of Neisseria meningitidis are a key virulence factor, being the major adhesin of this capsulate organism and contributing to specificity for the human host. Pili are post‐translationally modified by addition of either an O‐linked trisaccharide, Gal (β1‐4) Gal (α1‐3) 2,4‐diacetamido‐2,4,6‐trideoxyhexose or an O‐linked disaccharide Gal (α1,3) GlcNAc. The role of these structures in meningococcal pathogenesis has not been resolved. In previous studies we identified two separate genetic loci, pglA and pglBCD, involved in pilin glycosylation. Putative functions have been allocated to these genes; however, there are not enough genes to account for the complete biosynthesis of the described structures, suggesting additional genes remain to be identified. In addition, it is not known why some strains express the trisaccharide structure and some the disaccharide structure. In order to find additional genes involved in the biosynthesis of these structures, we used the recently published group A strain Z2491 and group B strain MC58 Neisseria meningitidis genomes and the unfinished Neisseria meningitidis group C strain FAM18 and Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain FA1090 genomes to identify novel genes involved in pilin glycosylation, based on homology to known oligosaccharide biosynthetic genes. We identified a new gene involved in pilin glycosylation designated pglE and examined four additional genes pglB/B2, pglF, pglG and pglH. A strain survey revealed that pglE and pglF were present in each strain examined. The pglG, pglH and pglB2 polymorphisms were not found in strain C311♯3 but were present in a large number of clinical isolates. Insertional mutations were constructed in pglE and pglF in N. meningitidis strain C311♯3, a strain with well‐defined lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and pilin‐linked glycan structures. Increased gel migration of the pilin subunit molecules of pglE and pglF mutants was observed by Western analysis, indicating truncation of the trisaccharide structure. Antisera specific for the C311♯3 trisaccharide failed to react with pilin from these pglE and pglF mutants. GC‐MS analysis of the sugar composition of the pglE mutant showed a reduction in galactose compared with C311♯3 wild type. Analysis of amino acid sequence homologies has suggested specific roles for pglE and pglF in the biosynthesis of the trisaccharide structure. Further, we present evidence that pglE, which contains heptanucleotide repeats, is responsible for the phase variation between trisaccharide and disaccharide structures in strain C311♯3 and other strains. We also present evidence that pglG, pglH and pglB2 are potentially phase variable.
Correlation of interleukin-6-174 GC and interleukin-6-572 GC gene polymorphisms with periodontal disease in an Iranian population

Background: Periodontal disease has a multifactorial etiology. A combination of microbial agents and environmental, habitual, systemic, and genetic risk factors is responsible for the development of periodontal disease. Host immune response causes the destruction of tooth-supporting structure and eventual tooth loss. This study aimed to assess the correlation of interleukin 6 (IL-6) -174-GC and IL-6-572-GC gene polymorphisms with periodontal disease in an Iranian population. Materials and Methods: This case–control analytical study was conducted on 129 subjects presenting to the laboratory of Taleghani Hospital. Subjects underwent clinical and periodontal examinations and divided into five groups of healthy, gingivitis and mild, moderate and severe periodontitis. Blood samples (2 ml) were obtained. Genomic DNA was extracted manually using the salting-out method. IL-6 sequence amplification was performed using polymerase chain reaction with three thermal protocols. Digested products were analyzed by electrophoresis through 2% agarose gel using Gel Red staining. Data were analyzed using Chi-square, Kruskal–Wallis, and Mann–Whitney tests, and P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: The frequency of GG polymorphism at IL-6-174 and IL-6-572 genomic regions was 51.2% and 71.3%, respectively. The frequency of IL-6-572-GG polymorphism was significantly greater than that of IL-6-572-GC polymorphism (P < 0.001). Comparison of the mean and maximum pocket depth and clinical attachment level, as well as bleeding on probing percentage, revealed significant differences between the healthy controls and periodontitis patients (P < 0.001). The frequency percentages of GC and GG polymorphisms were almost equal in the healthy, gingivitis, and periodontitis groups. In other words, the frequency of the two polymorphisms was not significantly different between the health and disease states (P = 0.065 for IL-6-572 and P = 0.63 for IL-6-174). Conclusion: This study found no association between IL-6-174 and IL-6-572 gene polymorphisms and periodontitis in the studied population.
Cover times for Brownian motion and random walks in two dimensions

LetT (x;") denote the rst hitting time of the disc of radius " centered at x for Brownian motion on the two dimensional torus T 2 . We prove that sup x2T2T (x;")=j log"j 2 ! 2= as " ! 0. The same applies to Brownian motion on any smooth, compact connected, two- dimensional, Riemannian manifold with unit area and no boundary. As a consequence, we prove a conjecture, due to Aldous (1989), that the number of steps it takes a simple random walk to cover all points of the lattice torus Z 2 is asymptotic to 4n 2 (logn) 2 = . Determining these asymptotics is an essential step toward analyzing the fractal structure of the set of uncovered sites before coverage is complete; so far, this structure was only studied non-rigorously in the physics literature. We also establish a conjecture, due to Kesten and R ev esz, that describes the asymptotics for the number of steps needed by simple random walk in Z 2 to cover the disc of radius n.
Simian Virus 40-Based Replication of Catalytically Inactive Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Integrase Mutants in Nonpermissive T Cells and Monocyte-Derived Macrophages

ABSTRACT Integrase function is required for retroviral replication in most instances. Although certain permissive T-cell lines support human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication in the absence of functional integrase, most cell lines and primary human cells are nonpermissive for integrase mutant growth. Since unintegrated retroviral DNA is lost from cells following cell division, we investigated whether incorporating a functional origin of DNA replication into integrase mutant HIV-1 might overcome the block to efficient gene expression and replication in nonpermissive T-cell lines and primary cells. Whereas the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) origin (oriP) did little to augment expression from an integrase mutant reporter virus in EBV nuclear antigen 1-expressing cells, simian virus 40 (SV40) oriT dramatically enhanced integrase mutant infectivity in T-antigen (Tag)-expressing cells. Incorporating oriT into the nef position of a full-length, integrase-defective virus strain yielded efficient replication in Tag-expressing nonpermissive Jurkat T cells without reversion to an integration-competent genotype. Adding Tag to integrase mutant-oriT viruses yielded 11.3-kb SV40-HIV chimeras that replicated in Jurkat cells and primary monocyte-derived macrophages. Real-time quantitative PCR analyses of Jurkat cell infections revealed that amplified copies of unintegrated DNA likely contributed to SV40-HIV integrase mutant replication. SV40-based HIV-1 integrase mutant replication in otherwise nonpermissive cells suggests alternative approaches to standard integrase-mediated retroviral gene transfer strategies.
Seamounts are hotspots of pelagic biodiversity in the open ocean

The identification of biodiversity hotspots and their management for conservation have been hypothesized as effective ways to protect many species. There has been a significant effort to identify and map these areas at a global scale, but the coarse resolution of most datasets masks the small-scale patterns associated with coastal habitats or seamounts. Here we used tuna longline observer data to investigate the role of seamounts in aggregating large pelagic biodiversity and to identify which pelagic species are associated with seamounts. Our analysis indicates that seamounts are hotspots of pelagic biodiversity. Higher species richness was detected in association with seamounts than with coastal or oceanic areas. Seamounts were found to have higher species diversity within 30–40 km of the summit, whereas for sets close to coastal habitat the diversity was lower and fairly constant with distance. Higher probability of capture and higher number of fish caught were detected for some shark, billfish, tuna, and other by-catch species. The study supports hypotheses that seamounts may be areas of special interest for management for marine pelagic predators.
Optimal Routing for Quantum Networks

To fully unleash the potentials of quantum computing, several new challenges and open problems need to be addressed. From a routing perspective, the optimal routing problem, i.e., the problem of jointly designing a routing protocol and a route metric assuring the discovery of the route providing the highest quantum communication opportunities between an arbitrary couple of quantum devices, is crucial. In this paper, the optimal routing problem is addressed for generic quantum network architectures composed by repeaters operating through single atoms in optical cavities. Specifically, we first model the entanglement generation through a stochastic framework that allows us to jointly account for the key physical-mechanisms affecting the end-to-end entanglement rate, such as decoherence time, atom–photon and photon–photon entanglement generation, entanglement swapping, and imperfect Bell-state measurement. Then, we derive the closed-form expression of the end-to-end entanglement rate for an arbitrary path and we design an efficient algorithm for entanglement rate computation. Finally, we design a routing protocol and we prove its optimality when used in conjunction with the entanglement rate as routing metric.
Retrospective Analysis of Bevacizumab in Combination with Fotemustine in Chinese Patients with Recurrent Glioblastoma Multiforme

The aim of this study was to assess the activity and safety of bevacizumab (BEV) and fotemustine (FTM) for the treatment of recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients and explore the potential prognostic parameters on survival. This study retrospectively analyzed all patients with GBM who were treated with at least one cycle of BEV and FTM from July 2010 to October 2012. A total of 176 patients with recurrent GBM were enrolled. The response rate and disease control rate were 46.6% and 90.9%, respectively. A 6-month PFS rate of 33.3% (95% CI: 26.5%–40.3%) and a median PFS of 5.0 (95% CI: 2.4–7.5) months were observed. The median OS was 8.0 (95% CI: 6.7–9.2) months. Multivariate analysis showed that risk factors with a significant influence on the PFS of all patients were Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) (≥70 versus <70, HR = 0.53, 95% CI: 0.39–0.73, and P = 0.01) and MGMT status (methylated versus unmethylated, HR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.52–0.97, and P = 0.04). The most common treatment-related adverse events were fatigue, proteinuria, hypophonia, hypertension, thrombocytopenia, anemia, and neutropenia. In conclusion, combination of BEV with FTM is well tolerated and may derive some clinical benefits in recurrent GBM patients. Higher KPS and MGMT promoter hypermethylation were suggested to be associated with prolonged survival.
Measurement and analysis of ambiguity functions of passive radar transmissions

Passive coherent location (PCL) radar systems make use of broadcast or communications 'illuminators of opportunity' in a bistatic configuration. In order to understand the performance limitations of this type of radar it is necessary to know the ambiguity properties of these waveforms, and how they vary with the form of modulation and with the bistatic geometry. This paper presents and analyses the ambiguity functions of a set of off-air measurements of signals that might be used for PCL systems. We find that the ambiguity behavior of analog modulation formats, such as FM radio or analog television, depend significantly on the instantaneous program content, and can be very poor, for example during pauses in speech. Digital modulation formats, in contrast, are much more favorable and much more constant with time. This suggests that the choice of signals to be used for PCL may be made on a dynamic basis, according to the modulation and bistatic geometry.
Solving the straggler problem for iterative convergent parallel

Parallel executions of iterative machine learning (ML) algorithms can suffer significant performance losses to stragglers. The regular (e.g., per iteration) barriers used in the traditional BSP approach cause every transient slowdown of any worker thread to delay all others. This paper describes a scalable, efficient solution to the straggler problem for this important class of parallel ML problems, combining a more flexible synchronization model with dynamic peer-to-peer re-assignment of work among workers. Experiments with both synthetic straggler behaviors and real straggler behavior observed on Amazon EC2 confirm the significance of the problem and the effectiveness of the solution, as implemented in a framework called FlexRR. Using FlexRR, we consistently observe near-ideal run-times (relative to no performance jitter) across all straggler patterns tested. Acknowledgements: We thank Jim Cipar, Qirong Ho, Jin Kyu Kim, Senghyeuk Lee, and other big-learning collaborators for our many insightful discussions about system support for large-scale ML. We thank Ron Brightwell, Kurt Ferreira, Kevin Pedretti, and Lee Ward of Sandia National Laboratories for their insight about OS Jitters. We thank the members and companies of the PDL Consortium (including Actifio, APC, EMC, Emulex, Facebook, Fusion-IO, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, NEC Labs, NetApp, Oracle, Panasas, Riverbed, Samsung, Seagate, STEC, Symantec, VMWare, Western Digital) for their interest, insights, feedback, and support. This research is supported in part by Intel as part of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Cloud Computing (ISTC-CC), National Science Foundation under awards CNS-1042537 and CNS-1042543 (PRObE [28]), by DARPA Grant FA87501220324, and by an AWS Education Grant award.
Mining a Large-Scale Term-Concept Network from Wikipedia

Social tagging and information retrieval are challenged by the fact that the same item or idea can be expressed by different terms or words. To counteract the problem of variable terminology, researchers have proposed concept-based information retrieval. To date, however, most concept spaces have been either manually-produced taxonomies or special-purpose ontologies, too small for classifying arbitrary resources. To create a large set of concepts, and to facilitate terms to concept mapping, we introduce mine a network of concepts and terms from Wikipedia. Our algorithm results in a robust, extensible term-concept network for tagging and information retrieval, containing over 2,000,000 concepts with mappings to over 3,000,000 unique
Passive Identification and Analysis of TCP Anomalies

In this paper we focus on passive measurements of TCP traffic, main component of nowadays traffic. We propose a heuristic technique for the classification of the anomalies that may occur during the lifetime of a TCP flow, such as out-of-sequence and duplicate segments. Since TCP is a closed-loop protocol that infers network conditions by means of losses and reacts accordingly, the possibility of carefully distinguishing the causes of anomalies in TCP traffic is very appealing, since it may be instrumental to the deep understanding of TCP behavior in real environments and to protocol engineering as well. We apply the proposed heuristic to traffic traces collected at both networks edges and backbone links. By studying the statistical properties of TCP anomalies, we find that their aggregate exhibits Long Range Dependence phenomena, but that anomalies suffered by individual long-lived flows are on the contrary uncorrelated. Interestingly, no dependence to the actual link load is observed.
Reading Courtesy Amounts on Handwritten Paper Checks

In spite of the rapid advances in computers and communication technologies, a number of large-scale applications continue to rely heavily on the use of paper as the dominant medium, either in an intra-organizational or an inter-organizational environment. One major example of this category of paper intensive applications is the check processing application. In a number of countries, the value of each check is read by human eyes before the check is physically transported, in stages, from the point it was presented to the location of the branch of the bank which issued the blank check to the concerned account holder. This process of manual reading of each check involves significant time and cost. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to read the numerical amount field on the check; this field is also called the courtesy amount field. In the case of check processing, the segmentation of unconstrained strings into individual digits is a challenging task because one needs to accommodate special cases involving: connected or overlapping digits, broken digits, and digits physically connected to a piece of stroke that belongs to a neighboring digit. The system described in this paper involves three stages: the segmentation of the string into a series of individual characters; the normalization of each isolated character; and the recognition of each character based on a neural network classifier.
Rates of Switching Antiretroviral Drugs in a Primary Care Service in South Africa before and after Introduction of Tenofovir

Introduction Antiretroviral changes (single drug substitutions and regimen switches) limit treatment options and introduce challenges such as increased cost, monitoring and adherence difficulties. Patterns of drug substitutions and regimen switches from stavudine (d4T) and zidovudine (AZT) regimens have been well described but data on tenofovir (TDF) are more limited. This study describes the patterns and risk factors for drug changes of these antiretroviral drugs in adults. Method This retrospective cohort study included HIV positive, antiretroviral treatment (ART) naïve adults aged ≥18 years who started ART with two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) and a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor. Follow-up was censored at first drug change and analysis focused on NRTI changes only. Results Between September 2002 and April 2011, 5095 adults initiated ART in Gugulethu. This comprised 948 subjects on TDF, 3438 on d4T and 709 subjects on AZT. Virological suppression rates at 1 year, regimen switching due to virological failure and overall losses to the programme were similar across the three groups. TDF had the lowest incidence rate of drug substitutions (2.6 per 100 P/Ys) compared to 17.9 for d4T and 8.5 per 100 P/Ys for AZT. Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) accounted for the majority of drug substitutions of d4T. Multivariate analysis showed that increasing age, female sex and d4T exposure were associated with increased hazard of drug substitution due to ADRs. Conversely, TDF exposure was associated with a substantially lower risk of substitution (adjusted hazards ratio 0.38; 95% CI 0.20–0.72). Conclusion Regimen switches and virological suppression were similar for patients exposed to TDF, d4T and AZT, suggesting all regimens were equally effective. However, TDF was better tolerated with a substantially lower rate of drug substitutions due to ADRs.