Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scalable Reliability Modelling of RAID Storage Subsystems

Reliability modelling of RAID storage systems with its various components such as RAID controllers, enclosures, expanders, interconnects and disks is important from a storage system designer's point of view. A model that can express all the failure characteristics of the whole RAID storage system can be used to evaluate design choices, perform cost reliability trade-offs and conduct sensitivity analyses. However, including such details makes the computational models of reliability quickly infeasible. We present a CTMC reliability model for RAID storage systems that scales to much larger systems than heretofore reported and we try to model all the components as accurately as possible. We use several state-space reduction techniques at the user level, such as aggregating all in-series components and hierarchical decomposition, to reduce the size of our model. To automate computation of reliability, we use the PRISM model checker as a CTMC solver where appropriate. Our modelling techniques using PRISM are more practical (in both time and effort) compared to previously reported Monte-Carlo simulation techniques. Our model for RAID storage systems (that includes, for example, disks, expanders, enclosures) uses Weibull distributions for disks and, where appropriate, correlated failure modes for disks, while we use exponential distributions with independent failure modes for all other components. To use the CTMC solver, we approximate the Weibull distribution for a disk using sum of exponentials and we confirm that this model gives results that are in reasonably good agreement with those from the sequential Monte Carlo simulation methods for RAID disk subsystems reported in literature earlier. Using a combination of scalable techniques, we are able to model and compute reliability for fairly large configurations with upto 600 disks using this model.
Mycolactones: immunosuppressive and cytotoxic polyketides produced by aquatic mycobacteria

Mycolactone structural variants, produced by Mycobacterium ulcerans and related mycobacteria, are caused by rearrangements among the highly homologous domains and modules within the MlsB polyketide megasynthase, that in turn alter the immunosuppressive and cytotoxic potency of these natural products.
Three-Dimensional Distribution of the ISM in the Milky Way Galaxy: II. The Molecular Gas Disk

We created a three-dimensional distribution map of molecular gas throughout the Milky Way galaxy using the latest 12 CO (J =1–0) survey data cube and the rotation curve based on the kinematic distance. The radial distribution of the molecular gas shows a central peak and a second peak around 0.5 R0 (R0: the solar Galactocentric distance). The thickness of the molecular disk slightly increases from 48pc to 160pc with the Galactocentric distance within a radius range of 0–11kpc. We were able to trace the Outer, the Perseus, the Sagittarius–Carina, the Scutum–Crux, and the Norma arms as logarithmic spiral arms with pitch angles of 11 ◦ –15 ◦ . Considering that the pitch angles of the spiral arms are within this range, the Norma and the Outer arms seem to be identified as the same spiral arm. We could also trace a midplane displacement, whose amplitude is nearly constant inside a 10kpc radius and increases beyond this radius. The ridges of the midplane displacement form the leading spiral arms.
History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities

Extended conflict situations in Northern Ireland or South Africa, the local effects of the rise of multinational corporations, and conflicts in workplaces, households, and academic fields are all crucibles for the forging of identities. In this volume, the authors bring their research to bear on enduring struggles and the practices of identity within those struggles. This collection of essays explores the innermost, generative aspects of subjects as social, cultural, and historical beings and raises serious questions about long-term conflicts and sustained identities in the world today. Nine ethnographers address such topics as the politically sexualized transformation of identities of women political prisoners in Northern Ireland; the changing character of political activism across generations in a Guatemala Mayan family; the cultural forms that mediate the struggles of working-class men on shop floors in England; and class and community struggles between the state and grassroots activists in New York.
バランスシート不況下の世界経済 = The world in balance sheet recession

第１章 バランスシート不況の基本概念 第２章 金融政策と「量的緩和の罠」 第３章 バランスシート不況下の米国経済 第４章 アベノミクスに宿る大きな可能性 第５章 ユーロ危機の真相と解決 第６章 中国経済が直面する問題
Single-Document Summarization as a Tree Knapsack Problem

Recent studies on extractive text summarization formulate it as a combinatorial optimization problem such as a Knapsack Problem, a Maximum Coverage Problem or a Budgeted Median Problem. These methods successfully improved summarization quality, but they did not consider the rhetorical relations between the textual units of a source document. Thus, summaries generated by these methods may lack logical coherence. This paper proposes a single document summarization method based on the trimming of a discourse tree. This is a two-fold process. First, we propose rules for transforming a rhetorical structure theorybased discourse tree into a dependency-based discourse tree, which allows us to take a treetrimming approach to summarization. Second, we formulate the problem of trimming a dependency-based discourse tree as a Tree Knapsack Problem, then solve it with integer linear programming (ILP). Evaluation results showed that our method improved ROUGE scores.
Horizontal Mergers: Comment

Joseph Farrell and Carl Shapiro (1990a) present an interesting and elegant analysis of horizontal mergers in the context of a Cournot model under quite general demand and cost conditions. One section of their paper deals with the effects of mergers on price or consumer welfare. In it they show that, in a Cournot model, mergers that do not lower costs always raise price and that mergers that lower costs still raise price unless they lower costs quite a lot. These results are much more general than anything in the prior literature. Another section of the paper deals with the effects of mergers on nonmerging firms and consumers, which Farrell and Shapiro term "external. " With some minor additional assumptions, they show that a merger is externally welfare-enhancing if (but not only if)
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net Ace2-ang-(1-7)-mas Axis in Brain: a Potential Target for Prevention and Treatment of Ischemic Stroke

The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in brain is a crucial regulator for physiological homeostasis and diseases of cerebrovascular system, such as ischemic stroke. Overactivation of brain Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)-Angiotensin II (Ang II)-Angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT 1 R) axis was found to be involved in the progress of hypertension, atherosclerosis and thrombogenesis, which increased the susceptibility to ischemic stroke. Besides, brain Ang II levels have been revealed to be increased in ischemic tissues after stroke, and contribute to neural damage through elevating oxidative stress levels and inducing inflammatory response in the ischemic hemisphere via AT 1 R. In recent years, new components of RAS have been discovered, including ACE2, Angiotensin-(1–7) [Ang-(1-7)] and Mas, which constitute ACE2-Ang-(1-7)-Mas axis. ACE2 converts Ang II to Ang-(1-7), and Ang-(1-7) binds with its receptor Mas, exerting benefical effects in cerebrovascular disease. Through interacting with nitric oxide and bradykinin, Ang-(1-7) could attenuate the development of hypertension and the pathologic progress of atherosclerosis. Besides, its antithrombotic activity also prevents thrombogenic events, which may contribute to reduce the risk of ischemic stroke. In addition, after ischemia insult, ACE2-Ang-(1-7)-Mas has been shown to reduce the cerebral infarct size and improve neurological deficits through its antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects. Taken together, activation of the ACE2-Ang-(1-7)-Mas axis may become a novel therapeutic target in prevention and treatment of ischemia stroke, which deserves further investigations.
Variability and recent trends in the African carbon balance

Variability and recent trends in the African carbon balance P. Ciais, S. -L. Piao, P. Cadule, P. Friedlingstein, and A. Chédin LSCE, UMR CEA-CNRS, CE, L’Orme des Merisiers, Gif-sur-Yvette, France Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China Groupe Analyse du Rayonnement Atmospherique, Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, ARA/LMD/IPSL, Ecole Polytechnique RD 36, Palaiseau, France Received: 8 July 2008 – Accepted: 18 July 2008 – Published: 2 September 2008 Correspondence to: P. Ciais (philippe.ciais@lsce.ipsl.fr) Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.
Tax Evasion: An Experimental Approach

Preface Acknowledgements 1. Tax evasion in theory and in practice 2. The problem of measurement 3. Social comparison, equity, attitudes, and tax evasion 4. Framing, opportunity, and individual differences 5. The subjects' view 6. Tax-evasion experiments: an economists' view Frank A. Cowell 7. The conduct of tax-evasion experiments: validation, analytical methods, and experimental realism Susan B. Long and Judyth A. Swingen 8. Reply and conclusions References Subject index Author index.
A wavelet-based copula approach for modeling market risk in agricultural commodity markets

We consider the problem of accurate market risk modeling for agricultural commodity products over heterogeneous investment horizons using copulas and wavelet methods. Our results indicate that the degree and structure of the dependence of daily commodity returns on the three market risk fac- tors (federal funds rate, USD/Euro exchange rate, and world stock market ? uctuations) vary according to the time scale. Changes in the USD/EUR exchange rate and the stock market index are the dominant risks for agri- cultural commodity markets. Moreover, the tail dependence on the daily re- turns of the three market risk factors is also scale-dependent, and frequently asymmetric. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that the application of the wavelet-copula model improves the accuracy of VaR estimates, compared to traditional approaches.
Auto-Tuning the Java Virtual Machine

We address the problem of tuning the performance of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) with run-time flags (parameters). We use the Hot Spot JVM in our study. As the Hot Spot JVM comes with over 600 flags to choose from, selecting a subset manually to maximize performance is infeasible. In prior work, the potential performance improvement is limited by the fact that only a subset of the tunable flags are tuned. We adopt a different approach and present the Hot Spot Auto-tuner which considers the entire JVM and the effect of all the flags. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first auto-tuner for optimizing the performance of the JVM as a whole. We organize the JVM flags into a tree structure by building a flag-hierarchy, which helps us to resolve dependencies on aspects of the JVM such as garbage collector algorithms and JIT compilation, and helps to reduce the configuration search-space. Experiments with the SPECjvm2008 and DaCapo benchmarks show that we could optimize the Hot Spot JVM with significant speedup, 16 SPECjvm2008 startup programs were improved by an average of 19% with three of them improved dramatically by 63%, 51% and 32% within a maximum tuning time of 200 minutes for each. Based on a minimum tuning time of 200 minutes, average performance improvement for 13 DaCapo benchmark programs is 26% with 42% being the maximum improvement.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms Mediate Early-Onset Smoking

Background/Aims: Symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have often been associated with early-onset smoking. We hypothesize that reductions in ADHD symptoms due to an intervention have a mediating effect on early-onset smoking. Methods: In a universal, school-based, randomized controlled intervention trial, we examined whether intervention-induced reductions in ADHD symptoms at age 9 mediated the reduced risk of tobacco use onset among these children at age 10 or 11 years. A sample of 477 first-grade boys and girls were randomly assigned to the Good Behavior Game intervention (n = 263), a 2-year (grades 2 and 3) universal classroom-based intervention aimed at reducing disruptive behavior problems, or to a control condition (n = 214). ADHD symptoms were assessed through teacher ratings. Early onset of tobacco use was assessed through self-report. Results: The intervention-induced reductions in ADHD symptoms fully mediated the distal effect of intervention on reductions in early-onset smoking. Conclusions: Our results showed that programs that target ADHD symptoms may protect children from early-onset smoking as well. Further research is needed to examine pathways from ADHD symptoms to tobacco use.
mapDamage2.0: fast approximate Bayesian estimates of ancient DNA damage parameters

Motivation: Ancient DNA (aDNA) molecules in fossilized bones and teeth, coprolites, sediments, mummified specimens and museum collections represent fantastic sources of information for evolutionary biologists, revealing the agents of past epidemics and the dynamics of past populations. However, the analysis of aDNA generally faces two major issues. Firstly, sequences consist of a mixture of endogenous and various exogenous backgrounds, mostly microbial. Secondly, high nucleotide misincorporation rates can be observed as a result of severe post-mortem DNA damage. Such misincorporation patterns are instrumental to authenticate ancient sequences versus modern contaminants. We recently developed the user-friendly mapDamage package that identifies such patterns from next-generation sequencing (NGS) sequence datasets. The absence of formal statistical modeling of the DNA damage process, however, precluded rigorous quantitative comparisons across samples. Results: Here, we describe mapDamage 2.0 that extends the original features of mapDamage by incorporating a statistical model of DNA damage. Assuming that damage events depend only on sequencing position and post-mortem deamination, our Bayesian statistical framework provides estimates of four key features of aDNA molecules: the average length of overhangs (λ), nick frequency (ν) and cytosine deamination rates in both double-stranded regions () and overhangs (). Our model enables rescaling base quality scores according to their probability of being damaged. mapDamage 2.0 handles NGS datasets with ease and is compatible with a wide range of DNA library protocols. Availability: mapDamage 2.0 is available at ginolhac.github. io/mapDamage/ as a Python package and documentation is maintained at the Centre for GeoGenetics Web site (geogenetics.ku.dk/publications/mapdamage2.0/). Contact: jonsson.hakon@gmail.com Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Does Schooling Cause Growth or the Other Way Around?

Barro (1991) and others find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries, with each additional year of 1960 enrollment associated with about . 6% per year faster growth in per capita GDP from 1960 to 1990. In a model with finite-lived individuals who choose schooling, schooling can influence growth, but also faster technology-driven growth can induce more schooling by raising the effective rate of return on investment in schooling. We consider a variety of evidence to determine the strength of these channels, with two main findings. First, faster-growing countries have at most modestly flatter cross-sectional experience-earnings profiles, consistent with a minority role for the channel from schooling to growth. Second, we calibrate the model using evidence from the labor literature and employ UNESCO attainment data to construct schooling going back well before 1960. We find the channel from schooling to growth to be too weak to generate even half of Barro's coefficient under a range of plausible parameter values. The reverse channel from expected growth to schooling, in contrast, is capable of explaining the empirical relationship. We conclude that the evidence favors a dominant role for the reverse channel from growth to schooling.
Optimal Financial Repression

Modern financial repression in advanced economies does not rely on increasing seigniorage revenue, but mostly rests upon regulatory measures to enlarge the demand for public debt that delivers extremely low or negative real interest rate. In this paper we propose the extension of the overlapping generations model to question the optimality of financial repression in the form of non-market placement of the public debt in the captive pension fund. We show that financial repression and capital income taxation are not perfect substitutes. The optimal degree of financial repression depends on the growth rate of population. Moreover, the benevolent government makes a decision to confiscate some part of the pension wealth
Characteristics and Results of the Management of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphomas: The Experience of Côte d'Ivoire

Diffuse large B-cell lymphomas have been little studied in black Africans. The purpose of our study was to determine the characteristics and results of the management of these lymphomas. Patients and Methods. In a descriptive and analytic retrospective study we studied the medical records of 63 patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma hospitalized during the period from 1991 to 2007. The diagnosis was made after lymph node or organ biopsy. Response to treatment, OS, PFS, and toxicity were studied. The complete response has been analyzed univariate and multivariate analysis. Results. The median age was 42 years. The sex ratio was 2. The HIV serology was positive in 11 cases, and 8 patients had antiretroviral therapy. In 71% the lymphoma was at stages III and IV of Ann Arbor. IPI was ≥3 in 65%. Complete remission was achieved in 43%. Only 43% of patients had had a good compliance. Progression-free survival at 3 years was 32%, and overall survival at 3 years was 50%. 13% of patients were lost to follow up, and 51% of them died. In terms of analysis the complete remission rate was influenced by the stage of Ann Arbor (P < 0.0001), biological b symptoms (P < 0.01), the IPI (P < 0.0001), and the socioeconomic standing (P = 0.001). In multivariate analysis, only IPI and stage of Ann Arbor influence the complete remission.
Evaluation of DNS based SSH dictionary attack traffic in campus network

We performed statistical analysis on the total PTR resource record (RR) based DNS query packet traffic from a university campus network to the top domain DNS server through March 14th, 2009, when the network servers in the campus network were under inbound SSH dictionary attack. The interesting results are obtained, as follows: (1) the network servers, especially those providing SSH services, generated the significant PTR RR based DNS query request packet traffic through 07:30-08:30 in March 14th, 2009, (2) we calculated sample variance for the DNS query request packet traffic, (3) the variance can change in a sharp manner through 07:30-08:30, (4) we developed a couple of DNS based SSH detection technologies by employing the PTR RR DNS query request packet traffic variance- and the DNS query keywords Euclid distance based methods, and (5) we evaluated and compared the both detection rates. As a result, although the both detection technologies take high detection rates, the Euclid distance based detection technology can take a low false positive rate than that of the variance based one, indicating that we can detect the inbound SSH dictionary attack to the network server in the campus network by observing the total PTR RR DNS query request packet traffic from the campus network.
The Taylor Rule and the Transformation of Monetary Policy

Preface by Richard W. Fisher Introduction by Evan F. Koenig, Robert Leeson, and George A. Kahn I. TAYLOR\u2019S APPROACH TO MONETARY THEORY AND POLICY 1. Monetary Policy Rules: from Adam Smith to John Taylor by Pier Francesco Asso, Robert Leeson 2. The Taylor Rule and the Practice of Central Banking by George A. Kahn 3. A Comparison with Milton Friedman by Edward Nelson 4. Two Basic Principles by Robert E. Lucas II. FROM THE GREAT MODERATION TO THE GREAT DEVIATION 5. The Great Moderation by Ben S. Bernanke 6. The Great Deviation by John B. Taylor 7. It\u2019s Not So Simple by Donald L. Kohn III. NEW CHALLENGES IN THE DECADE AHEAD 8. Forecast Targeting as a Monetary Policy Strategy: Policy Rules in Practice by Michael Woodford 9. The Dual Nature of Forecast Targeting and Instrument Rules by John B. Taylor 10. Evaluating Monetary Policy by Lars E. O. Svensson IV. TAYLOR\u2019S INFLUENCE ON POLICYMAKING: FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS 11. Overview by Ben S. Bernanke 12. The View from Inside the Fed by Janet Yellen 13. The View from Inside the European Central Bank by Otmar Issing 14. The View from Central Banks in Emerging Markets by Guillermo Ortiz 15. A View from the Financial Markets by John P. Lipsky APPENDIX The Pursuit of Policy Rules: A Conversation between Robert Leeson and John B. Taylor About the Contributing Authors Index
Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale

Objective The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) measures various aspects of psychological resilience in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric ailments. This study sought to assess the reliability and validity of the Korean version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (K-CD-RISC). Methods In total, 576 participants were enrolled (497 females and 79 males), including hospital nurses, university students, and firefighters. Subjects were evaluated using the K-CD-RISC, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Test-retest reliability and internal consistency were examined as a measure of reliability, and convergent validity and factor analysis were also performed to evaluate validity. Results Cronbach's α coefficient and test-retest reliability were 0.93 and 0.93, respectively. The total score on the K-CD-RISC was positively correlated with the RSES (r=0.56, p<0.01). Conversely, BDI (r=-0.46, p<0.01), PSS (r=-0.32, p<0.01), and IES-R scores (r=-0.26, p<0.01) were negatively correlated with the K-CD-RISC. The K-CD-RISC showed a five-factor structure that explained 57.2% of the variance. Conclusion The K-CD-RISC showed good reliability and validity for measurement of resilience among Korean subjects.
Learning a concatenative resynthesis system for noise suppression

This paper introduces a new approach to dictionary-based source separation employing a learned non-linear metric. In contrast to existing parametric source separation systems, this model is able to utilize a rich dictionary of speech signals. In contrast to previous dictionary-based source separation systems, the system can utilize perceptually relevant non-linear features of the noisy and clean audio. This approach utilizes a deep neural network (DNN) to predict whether a noisy chunk of audio contains a given clean chunk. Speaker-dependent experiments on the small-vocabulary CHÎME2-GRID corpus show that this model is able to accurately resynthesize clean speech from noisy observations. Preliminary listening tests show that the system's output has much higher audio quality than existing parametric systems trained on the same data, achieving noise suppression levels close to those of the original clean speech.