Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reducing memory reference energy with opportunistic virtual caching

Most modern cores perform a highly-associative transaction look aside buffer (TLB) lookup on every memory access. These designs often hide the TLB lookup latency by overlapping it with L1 cache access, but this overlap does not hide the power dissi-pated by TLB lookups. It can even exacerbate the power dissipation by requiring higher associativity L1 cache. With today's concern for power dissipation, designs could instead adopt a virtual L1 cache, wherein TLB access power is dissipated only after L1 cache misses. Unfortunately, virtual caches have compatibility issues, such as supporting writeable synonyms and x86's physical page table walker. This work proposes an Opportunistic Virtual Cache (OVC) that exposes virtual caching as a dynamic optimization by allowing some memory blocks to be cached with virtual addresses and others with physical addresses. OVC relies on small OS changes to signal which pages can use virtual caching (e.g., no writeable synonyms), but defaults to physical caching for compatibility. We show OVC's promise with analysis that finds virtual cache problems exist, but are dynamically rare. We change 240 lines in Linux 2.6. 28 to enable OVC. On experiments with Parsec and commercial workloads, the resulting system saves 94-99% of TLB lookup energy and nearly 23% of L1 cache dynamic lookup energy.
Natural history of focal nodular hyperplasia of the liver: An ultrasound study

Sixteen cases of focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) of the liver were followed by ultrasound (US) for a mean of 33 months (range 6–81). In 69% of the cases, the diagnosis was incidental. On US the lesions were single in 75% of the cases, localized in the right lobe in 75%, and subcapsular in 50%. No specific US‐pattern could be identified. A central scar was found in 19% of the patients. At the end of the follow‐up, the size was reduced in 7/16 cases, and in 1/16 the lesion disappeared. The spontaneous reduction of nodules in FNH must be considered in the management of this pseudotumor. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Capital Market Governance: How Do Security Laws Affect Market Performance?

This paper examines the link between capital market governance (CMG) and several key measures of market performance. Using detailed data from individual stock exchanges, we develop a composite CMG index that captures three dimensions of security laws: the degree of earnings opacity, the enforcement of insider laws, and the effect of removing short-selling restrictions. We find that improvements in the CMG index are associated with decreases in the cost-of-equity capital (both implied and realized), increases in market liquidity (trading volume, market depth, and U.S. foreign investments), and increases in market pricing efficiency (reduced price synchronicity and IPO underpricing). The results are quite consistent across individual components of CMG and over alternative market performance measures.
Shadow of doubt.

In December 2009, Anesthesia & Analgesia published a manuscript by Professor Joachim Boldt describing the effect of 2 different bypass pump priming solutions, albumin or a modern hydroxyethyl starch colloidal solution, on markers of postoperative inflammation and organ function. Shortly after this paper was published, 3 readers contacted the Journal to question the small standard deviations of the interleukin IL-6 concentrations reported by Professor Boldt. I verified their concerns with several experts in IL-6 biology, who also thought that the standard deviations were inconsistent with typical IL-6 data. For reference, Figure 1A shows the IL-6 concentrations in Professor Boldt’s paper. Figure 1B shows the IL-6 concentrations in a similar study that looked at the effect on IL-6 of different coatings in the bypass circuit. As seen in Figure 1B, the standard deviation of the IL-6 assay is expected to be approximately of the same magnitude as the observation itself (i.e., the coefficient of variation is nearly 100%). Professor Boldt’s standard deviations are very small in comparison. I was also dismayed when I scrutinized the base excess values reported for patients in the 2 groups in the retracted paper, which appear as Figure 2. It seems farfetched that after cardiopulmonary bypass there would be a base excess of 0, with almost no variability, simply because of a difference in the colloidal solution used to prime the bypass pump. Research oversight in Germany is quite different than in the United States, as explained in editorials by Professor Förstermann and Hoffart et al. in this issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia. It took several months to determine who was responsible for ethical conduct of research at Klinikum Ludwigshafen, the hospital where the research was conducted. In May, I brought my concerns to Landesärztekammer Rheinland-Pfalz (“LÄK-RLP”), the State Medical Association of Rheinland-Pfalz. LÄK-RLP investigated the matter, and communicated their findings to me on October 25, 2010. LÄK-RLP identified multiple misrepresentations in the article, outlined in Table 1. Based on these findings, the article was retracted. As explained in the editorial by Hoffart et al., LÄK-RLP does not have the authority to investigate the study site itself. After retraction of the article, Klinikum Ludwigshafen, where the study was allegedly performed, convened an investigating committee to determine the integrity of the research. I received their report on November 25, 2010. Notable findings by the investigating committee include the following:
CARDIAC Role of the Mitochondrial Ca2+ Transporters in the High-[K+]o Cardioprotection of Rat Hearts Under Ischemia and Reperfusion: A Mechano-Energetic Study

The role of mitochondrial transporters in the cardioprotection of rat hearts exposed to high [K+]-low [Ca2+]-cardioplegia (CPG) and ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) was studied through the mechano-energetic consequences of target drugs. The total heat rate (Ht) and the left intraventricular pressure (LVP) were simultaneously measured in isolated perfused hearts (30°C and 1 Hz) inside a flow-calorimeter during 45 minutes of no-flow I and 45 minutes of R. After stabilization (C) they were pretreated with CPG and 100 μM 5-hydroxidecanoate (5HD, selective mKATP blocker) without and with 10 or 30 μM clonazepam (Clzp, mNCX inhibitor), 30 μM diazoxide (Dzx, selective mKATP opener), 1 μM Ru360 (selective Ca2+-uniporter blocker), and 0.2 μM cyclosporine-A, (mPTP inhibitor, before I and during R). Before I, 5-hydroxydecanoate in CPG increased the resting heat rate (17.83 ± 3.55 mW/g) without changing the stunning. Clzp 30 μM + CPG + 5-hydroxydecanoate reduced the postischemic P with diastolic contracture and high Ht. Dzx protected C-hearts from stunning but increased it in CPG hearts with low economy (P/Ht) as well as Ru360. Cyclosporine-A did not modify the stunning of C or CPG ischemic hearts, suggesting that the mPTP was not opened. Conclusions: Mitochondria have a precise role for determining cardioprotection or stunning in high-K+ cardioplegic rat hearts under I/R. Known protective drugs, such as Dzx and Ru360, which reduce the mitochondrial Ca2+-uptake, increased the stunning of CPG-rat hearts and reduced muscle economy, whereas 5-hydroxydecanoate and Clzp together increased the stunning by inducing mitochondrial Ca2+ overload.
Interaction between Warfarin and Levofloxacin: Case Series

Warfarin is the most widely used oral anticoagulant and is indicated for many clinical conditions. Levofloxacin, a fluoroquinolone, is one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics in clinical practice and is effective against Gram-positive, Gram-negative, and atypical bacteria. While small prospective studies have not revealed any significant drug-drug interaction between warfarin and levofloxacin, several case reports have indicated that levofloxacin may significantly potentiate the anticoagulation effect of warfarin. We report 3 cases of serious bleeding complications that appear to be the result of the interaction between warfarin and levofloxacin. Physicians should be aware of this potential interaction and use caution when prescribing levofloxacin to patients taking warfarin.
Training in Mental Rotation and Spatial Visualization and Its Impact on Orthographic Drawing Performance

This paper reports the findings from an experimental study based on the pretest posttest research design that studied mental rotation (MR) and spatial visualization (SV) training outcomes and their impact on orthographic drawing performance. The sample of the study comprised 98 secondary school students (36 girls, 62 boys, Mage = 15.5 years, age range: 15 -16 years) who were randomly assigned into two experimental groups and a control group. The first experimental group trained in an interaction-enabled condition, the second experimental group trained in an animation-enhanced condition and the control group trained using printed materials. The research instruments used were computerized versions of the Mental Rotation and Spatial Visualization tests. Data were analyzed using a Statistical Package for Social Science, SPSS version 14.0. The results reveal a significant performance gain in spatial visualization and mental rotation accuracy, but not in mental rotation speed. The training method seems to be interlinked with SV, as the interaction-enabled group outperformed the other groups. In addition, technology based training methods seem more efficient, as both experimental groups performed better than the control group in MR accuracy. Moreover, gender was a significant variable, with boys attaining differential improvement gains, as opposed to girls. The group gaining higher SV through training performed better in solving an Orthographic Drawing task, indicating that the training method is related to the application of the received mental processes, in solving the task. Additionally, this particular finding implies that the cognitive process invoked in solving an orthographic drawing may share similar process associated with spatial visualization. Implications of the research findings are also discussed in this paper.
Evaluation of Shear Strength and Dilatancy Behavior of Reinforced Soil from Direct Shear Tests

In order to evaluate the shear strength and dilatancy behavior of coarse granular soils reinforced with geogrid a large direct shear apparatus (1000 x 1000 x 940 mm) was built. A series of shear tests were carried out to study the effect of geogrid orientation and soil volume changes on shear strength. A numerical model is proposed to calculate the shear strength increase. This is verified by the experimental results. Tensile strains in the geogrid can also be calculated using this model. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 860243.
Towards Real-Time Texture Synthesis with the Jump Map

While texture synthesis has been well-studied in recent years, real-time techniques remain elusive. To help facilitate real-time texture synthesis, we divide the task of texture synthesis into two phases: a relatively slow analysis phase, and a real-time synthesis phase. Any particular texture need only be analyzed once, and then an unlimited amount of texture may be synthesized in real-time. Our analysis phase generates a jump map, which stores for each input pixel a set of matching input pixels (jumps). Texture synthesis proceeds in real-time as a random walk through the jump map. Each new pixel is synthesized by extending the patch of input texture from which one of its neighbours was copied. Occasionally, a jump is taken through the jump map to begin a new patch. Despite the method's extreme simplicity, its speed and output quality compares favourably with recent patch-based algorithms.
Cheating the Lie Detector

The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) was recently introduced in this journal as a new and promising lie-detection tool. The initial report found 91% accuracy in determining which of two autobiographical events was true. It was suggested that the aIAT, unlike other lie-detection tests, is resistant to faking. We investigated whether participants can strategically alter their performance on the aIAT. Experiment 1 showed that participants guilty of a mock theft were able to obtain an innocent test outcome. Two additional experiments showed that guilty participants can fake the aIAT without prior experience with the aIAT and when a response deadline is imposed. The aIAT is subject to the same shortcomings as other lie-detection tests.
The effect of organizational support on ERP implementation

– The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to examine the impact of organizational support on behavioral intention (BI) regarding enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). , – A research model is proposed which describes the effects of organizational support, both formal and informal, on factors of TAM. A survey questionnaire is developed to test the proposed model. A total of 700 of questionnaires are distributed to users in small and medium enterprises that have implemented ERP systems in Korea and 209 responses are used for analyses. Structural equation modeling is employed to test the research hypotheses. , – The results indicate that the organizational support is an important factor for perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). PU and PEOU seem to lead to a higher level of interest in the ERP system and BI to use the system. The most notable finding of our study is that organizational support is positively associated with factors of TAM. , – The survey data used in this paper are collected from small‐ and medium‐sized companies in South Korea. Thus, the respondents in these firms might have been trained at different levels or on different modules of ERP, which would yield diversity in subject experience with different ERP systems. , – To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ERP implementation in a real world environment, organizations need to better understand user satisfaction. The TAM model provides a theoretical construct to explain how user satisfaction is affected.
Transport and fate of silver as polymer-stabilised nanoparticles and ions in a pilot wastewater treatment plant, followed by sludge digestion and disposal of sludge/soil mixtures: A case study

A case study of transport and changes in properties of polymer-stabilised Ag NPs is presented in this paper investigating their interaction in different treatment steps within a fully realistic pilot wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), in anaerobic digested sludge, and in soil/sludge mixtures. The fate of the same Ag NPs was tracked in these environments, hence taking the history of the Ag NPs into account. The results show that most of the Ag NPs end up in the sludge (80–100%), also after anaerobically digestion. Furthermore, the fraction of silver in the supernatant was very low after 48 h incubation with silver-containing digested sludge mixed with different soil types. However, when Ag NPs were added directly to the sludge/soil mixture, soluble silver was present in the supernatant with sandy soil, but not with clayey soil. In all, generated findings show that risk assessments and toxicological studies of Ag NPs suspensions must take into account possible chemical and particle transformations upon environmental entry, as silver in general become less soluble when transported to WWTPs and interacting with sludge, and soil.
Evaluation of an algorithm for aspect-based opinion mining using a lexicon-based approach

In this paper, we present a study of aspect-based opinion mining using a lexicon-based approach. We use a phrase-based opinion lexicon for the German language to investigate, how good strong positive and strong negative expressions of opinions, concerning products and services in the insurance domain, can be detected. We perform experiments on hand-tagged statements expressing opinions retrieved from the Ciao platform. The initial corpus contained about 14,000 sentences from 1,600 reviews. For both, positive and negative statements, more than 100 sentences were tagged. We show, that the algorithm can reach an accuracy of 62.2% for positive, but only 14.8% for negative utterances of opinions. We examine the cases, in which the opinion could not correctly be detected or in which the linking between the opinion statement and the aspect fails. Especially, the large gap in accuracy between positive and negative utterances is analysed.
Information and Hybrid Architecture Model of the OCP Contextual Information Management System

This paper describes OCP (Open Context Platform), a middleware which provides support for management of contextual information and merging of information from different sources. The host system is thus endowed with proactive capacities which, in turn, provide a certain environmental intelligence (8). The approach consists of a modelling of contextual information which is based on Semantic Web derived technologies and a description of the structured merging in the form of decision rules. The latter serve to classify situations of interest and subsequently to trigger off the relevant actions at each moment. Elsewhere, the underlying architecture in OCP is designed so that it can function both by centralizing all the contextual information from a central server and by distributing it among consumers and producers of this type of information.
Species-specific detection of Listeria monocytogenes by DNA amplification

The polymerase chain reaction was used to detect and specifically identify Listeria monocytogenes. A 174-bp region of the listeriolysin O gene was shown to be specifically amplified in L. monocytogenes but not in other species of Listeria or in a number of other gram-positive and gram-negative organisms. Less than 50 organisms could routinely be detected by a procedure involving two rounds of 35 amplification cycles each and without the need for subsequent hybridization with labeled probes.
A Recent Shift in the Monsoon Centers Associated with the Tropospheric Biennial Oscillation

AbstractThe tropospheric biennial oscillation (TBO) is conventionally considered to involve transitions between the Indian and Australian summer monsoons and the interactions between these two monsoons and the underlying Indo-Pacific Oceans. Here it is shown that, since the early 1990s, the TBO has evolved to mainly involve the transitions between the western North Pacific (WNP) and Australian monsoons. In this framework, the WNP monsoon replaces the Indian monsoon as the active Northern Hemisphere TBO monsoon center during recent decades. This change is found to be caused by stronger Pacific–Atlantic coupling and an increased influence of the tropical Atlantic Ocean on the Indian and WNP monsoons. The increased Atlantic Ocean influence damps the Pacific Ocean influence on the Indian summer monsoon (leading to a decrease in its variability) but amplifies the Pacific Ocean influence on the WNP summer monsoon (leading to an increase in its variability). These results suggest that the Pacific–Atlantic intera.
Dicer Is Associated with Ribosomal DNA Chromatin in Mammalian Cells

Background RNA silencing is a common term for pathways utilizing small RNAs as sequence-specific guides to repress gene expression. Components of the RNA silencing machinery are involved in different aspects of chromatin function in numerous organisms. However, association of RNA silencing with chromatin in mammalian cells remains unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings Immunostaining of mitotic chromosomes with antibodies visualizing either endogenous or ectopically expressed Dicer in mammalian cells revealed association of the protein with ribosomal DNA (rDNA) repeats. Chromatin immunoprecipitations and bisulfite sequencing experiments indicated that Dicer is associated with transcribed regions of both active and silenced genes in rDNA arrays of interphase chromosomes. Metabolic labeling of the mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells lacking Dicer did not reveal apparent defect in rRNA biogenesis though pre-rRNA synthesis in these cells was decreased, likely as a consequence of their slower growth caused by the loss of miRNAs. We analyzed in detail chromatin structure of rDNA but did not find any epigenetic changes at rDNA loci in Dicer−/− ES cells. Instead, we found that rDNA methylation is rather low in primary tissues, contrasting with rDNA methylation patterns in transformed cell lines. Conclusion/Significance We found that Dicer, a key component of RNA silencing pathways, can be detected in association with rDNA chromatin in mammalian cells. The role of this particular localization of Dicer is not readily apparent since the enzyme is associated with rDNA genes regardless of their transcriptional activity. However, localization of Dicer to the transcribed region suggests that transcription may contribute to the Dicer deposition at rDNA chromatin. We hypothesize that Dicer functions in maintaining integrity of rDNA arrays.
Isostatic pressing assisted indirect selective laser sintering of alumina components

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess a new powder metallurgy process to make alumina parts through indirect selective laser sintering (SLS). Density measurements, some geometrical assessments and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) microstructural analyses are performed after each stage of the process, allowing an objective overview to be provided of the challenges and possibilities for the processing of high density technical ceramic parts through SLS of ball milled alumina/polyamide powder agglomerates.Design/methodology/approach – The powder production by ball milling, SLS, cold isostatic pressing (CIP) or quasi isostatic pressing (QIP), debinding and sintering (FS) stages of the powder metallurgy process were sequentially investigated.Findings – Alumina parts with a density up to 94.1 per cent could be produced by a powder metallurgy process containing an SLS step. Microstructural investigation of the sintered samples reveals an alumina matrix with a grain size of ∼5 μm and two different ki.
Lamivudine prophylaxis reduces the incidence and severity of hepatitis in hepatitis B virus carriers who receive chemotherapy for lymphoma

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a common disease in China. Severe hepatitis is a well recognized complication in HBV carriers with malignant disease who receive cytotoxic chemotherapy. The objective of the current study was to assess the value of antiviral lamivudine for reducing the incidence and severity of hepatitis in HBV carriers with lymphoma who receive chemotherapy.
Nearby boundaries create eddies near microscopic filter feeders

We show through calculations, simulations and experiments that the eddies often observed near sessile filter feeders are frequently due to the presence of nearby boundaries. We model the common filter feeder Vorticella, which is approximately 50 µm across and which feeds by removing bacteria from ocean or pond water that it draws towards itself. We use both an analytical stokeslet model and a Brinkman flow approximation that exploits the narrow-gap geometry to predict the size of the eddy caused by two parallel no-slip boundaries that represent the slides between which experimental observations are often made. We also use three-dimensional finite-element simulations to fully solve for the flow around a model Vorticella and analyse the influence of multiple nearby boundaries. Additionally, we track particles around live feeding Vorticella in order to determine the experimental flow field. Our models are in good agreement both with each other and with experiments. We also provide approximate equations to predict the experimental eddy sizes owing to boundaries both for the case of a filter feeder between two slides and for the case of a filter feeder attached to a perpendicular surface between two slides.