Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
USENIX Association Proceedings of MobiSys 2003 : The First International Conference on Mobile Systems , Applications , and Services

The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is being deployed by GSM network operators world-wide, and promises to offer users \always-on" data access at bandwidths comparable to that of conventional xed-line telephone modems. Unfortunately, many users have found the reality to be rather di erent, experiencing very disappointing performance when, for example, browsing the web over GPRS. In this paper we investigate what causes the HTTP protocol and its underlying transport TCP to underperform in a GPRS environment. We examine why certain GPRS network characteristics interact badly with TCP to yield problems such as: link under-utilization for short-lived ows, excess queueing for long-lived ows, ACK compression, poor loss recovery, and gross unfairness between competing ows. We also show that many web browsers tend to be overly aggressive, and by opening too many simultaneous TCP connections can aggravate matters. We present the design and implementation of GPRSWeb { a mobile HTTP proxy system that mitigates many of the performance problems with a simple software update to a GPRS mobile device. The update is a `client proxy' that sits in the mobile device, and communicates with a `server proxy' located at the other end of the GPRS link close to the wiredwireless border. The dual proxy architecture collectively implements a number of key enhancements { an aggressive caching scheme that employs content-based hash keying to improve hit rates for dynamic content, a preemptive push of web page support resources to mobile clients, resource adaptation to suit client capabilities, delta encoded data transfers, DNS lookup migration, and a UDP-based reliable transport protocol that is speci cally optimized for use over GPRS. We show that these enhancements result in signi cant improvement in overall WWW performance over GPRS.
he stratigraphic expression of a large negative carbon isotope excursion from he Ediacaran Johnnie Formation , Death Valley ristin

The Rainstorm Member of the Ediacaran Johnnie Formation of the southern Basin and Range, US, records a large negative excursion in carbon isotope ratios of carbonate strata ( CVPDB > −6‰). The character of the excursion raises fundamental questions about whether this isotopic pattern is accurately capturing the time-series behavior of marine dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) or is a product of diagenesis. To explore this issue, we examined the expression of this isotopic excursion within the Johnnie oolite, a ∼2 m thick marker bed, which records the highest rate of change in 13C. Sedimentologically, the oolite unit is thought to be time-transgressive; if the isotopic excursion reflects time-series behavior of the carbon cycle, its expression in the oolite across the basin should systematically align the sections according to their slight diachroneity. Detailed carbon and oxygen isotopic stratigraphy of the oolite at seven different locations indicates the magnitude of the excursion at the base of the oolite is spatially variable such that after a palinspastic reconstruction the sections align along a systematic north to south gradient in the isotopic data. The oolite preserved in the Old Dad Mountains, the most southerly section measured, is an outlier to this trend (and the most difficult to ordinate accurately in the reconstruction), showing the largest isotopic range between the onset of carbonate deposition and top of the oolite. Several hypotheses are congruent with these data, but the sum of observations is best explained by a scenario wherein the oolite is time-transgressive and deposited in a north to south manner throughout the onset of the isotopic excursion. If correct, this implies that the stratigraphic 13C pattern reflects time series behavior of marine
Perturbations of quadratic centers of genus one

We propose a program for finding the cyclicity of period annuli of quadratic systems with centers of genus one. As a first step, we classify all such systems and determine the essential one-parameter quadratic perturbations which produce the maximal number of limit cycles. We compute the associated Poincare-Pontryagin-Melnikov functions whose zeros control the number of limit cycles. To illustrate our approach, we determine the cyclicity of the annuli of two particular reversible systems.
Patterns and correlates of self-help group membership in the United States

AUTHOR ABSTRACT Data from a recently completed national survey are presented on patterns and correlates of self-help group participation in the United States. Over twenty-five million Americans are estimated to have participated in a self-help group at some time in their lives; over ten million, in the past 12 months. These estimates are conservative and might, in fact, be substantially lower than the actual numbers of participants due to the fact that we excluded groups organized or facilitated by professionals. Clearinghouse data show that professional facilitation is common in contemporary self-help support groups. Synthetic cohort analysis suggests that group membership has been rising over the past three decades, excepting groups concerned with eating problems or with life transitions. Although self-help groups exist to address a wide range of life problems, more than onethird of participants--accounting for more than 70 percent of self-help meeting attendance--are involved in groups for substance use problems. Large proportions of people who use self-help groups for substance (50 percent) and emotional (76 percent) problems also see a professional for these same problems. Self-help group participants are more likely than nonparticipants with the same problems to by young, female, white, and unmarried. Participants generally have lower incomes than nonparticipants, although the opposite is true in groups for eating disorders. Those reporting less support and more conflict in their social networks were more likely to participate in self-help groups than those with more supportive networks. Generally, those with a lower sense of personal control and higher levels of neuroticism were more likely to participate in self-help groups than their counterparts. However, extroversion, openness to experience, and commitment to personal growth are not significant predictors of self-help group participation.
CLINICAL AND PHARMACOLOGIC INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF α‐TOCOPHEROL ON ADRIAMYCIN CARDIOTOXICITY *

Our data indicate that alpha-tocopherol used in an oral dose of 2 g/m2 daily results in a six- to eightfold increase of the vitamin E levels in serum. The occurrence of congestive heart failure in three patients and the observation of significant pathologic changes in endomyocardial biopsies in approximately half of the patients treated with a median cumulative adriamycin dose level of 550 mg/m2 indicate that alpha-tocopherol does not offer substantial protection against adriamycin-induced cardiac toxicity. The antitumor activity of the drug, however, is not compromised by the concomitant administration of the vitamin.
The Co-identity of Lipiarmycin A3 and Tiacumicin B

The co-identity of the antibiotics lipiarmycin A3 obtained from Actinoplanes deccanensis and tiacumicin B obtained from Dactylosporangium aurantiacum was unambiguously demonstrated through a number of experimental means. Spectroscopic analyses performed on both the antibiotics themselves and on their derivatives showed no difference between the two series of compounds. Moreover, unambiguous confirmation of the postulated identity of the two compounds was achieved by chemical degradation of lipiarmycin A3 and isolation of (3S,4R)-pentane-1,3,4-triol triacetate whose relative configuration was assigned by comparison with the authentic erythro and threo pentane-1,3,4-triol triacetates, obtained by chemical synthesis.
Low N‐acetylating capacity in patients with Stevens‐Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis *

Abstract Low constitutive N‐acetylating capacity has been implicated as a predisposing factor for the development of adverse reactions to certain drugs. This prompted us to investigate whether the N‐acetylating capacity of patients with serious cutaneous adverse reactions, i.e., Stevens‐Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) differed from that of healthy control subjects. N‐acctylating activity was measured in hair root cells by preparing a homogenate from freshly extracted hair roots and assessing acetyl‐CoA‐dependent N‐acetylation by RP‐HPLC using 2‐aminofluorene as a substrate. Samples were obtained from hospitalized patients suffering from acute SJS and TEN or from healthy controls. All patients with SJS and TEN were found to have a low N‐acetylating capacity (0.85 nmol/mg/min compared to 2.21 nmol/mg/min in controls, p<0.05). Based on these findings, a low constitutive N‐acetylating capacity may be one of the predisposing factors for the development of serious cutaneous adverse reactions to drugs that require N‐acetylation in these patients.
Performance Studies of Underwater Wireless Optical Communication Systems With Spatial Diversity: MIMO Scheme

In this paper, we analytically study the performance of multiple-input multiple-output underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems with ON–OFF keying modulation. To mitigate turbulence-induced fading, which is amongst the major degrading effects of underwater channels on the propagating optical signal, we use spatial diversity over UWOC links. Furthermore, the effects of absorption and scattering are considered in our analysis. We analytically obtain the exact and an upper bound bit error rate (BER) expressions for both optimal and equal gain combining. In order to more effectively calculate the system BER, we apply Gauss-Hermite quadrature formula as well as approximation to the sum of lognormal random variables. We also apply the photon-counting method to evaluate the system BER in the presence of shot noise. Our numerical results indicate an excellent match between the exact and upper bound BER curves. Also, a good match between the analytical results and numerical simulations confirms the accuracy of our derived expressions. Moreover, our results show that spatial diversity can considerably improve the system performance, especially for channels with higher turbulence, e.g., a $3\times 1$ multiple-input single-output transmission in a 25 m coastal water link with a log-amplitude variance of 0.16 can introduce 8 dB performance improvement at the BER of 10−9.
Listening to Preceptors: Part B

Through a mailed survey of 86 preceptors, a number of issues with preceptorship were identified through their written responses. They believe that they are largely unprepared and would like more advance notice that they are to precept, be recognized for their contributions, and be given assistant in the area of evaluation. Faculty and administrators need to identify strategies to address these issues and to consider giving meaningful financial contributions to preceptors.
A new Kinect-based frontal view gait recognition method via deterministic learning

In this paper a new method for frontal view gait recognition is presented. Joint angles data are captured by Microsoft Kinect. These frontal view gait features represent the motion trajectories and gait dynamics of human walking, which are suitable for persons identification. In the training phase, gait dynamics represented by joint angle features are approximated by radial basis function (RBF) neural networks. In the recognition phase, by comparing a set of constructed estimators with a test gait pattern, a set of recognition errors with L1 norms are generated. By using the smallest error principle, the test gait pattern similar to one of the training gait patterns can be recognized. Finally, several experiments are carried out on the self-constructed Kinect gait database, which includes at most 27 subjects, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Naive Bayes texture classification applied to whisker data from a moving robot

Many rodents use their whiskers to distinguish objects by surface texture. To examine possible mechanisms for this discrimination, data from an artificial whisker attached to a moving robot was used to test texture classification algorithms. This data was examined previously using a template-based classifier of the whisker vibration power spectrum [1]. Motivated by a proposal about the neural computations underlying sensory decision making [2], we classified the raw whisker signal using the related ‘naive Bayes’ method. The integration time window is important, with roughly 100ms of data required for good decisions and 500ms for the best decisions. For stereotyped motion, the classifier achieved hit rates of about 80% using a single (horizontal or vertical) stream of vibration data and 90% using both streams. Similar hit rates were achieved on natural data, apart from a single case in which the performance was only about 55%. Therefore this application of naive Bayes represents a biologically motivated algorithm that can perform well in a real-world robot task.
Cohabitation, Family and Society

1. Introduction 2. Diffusion Proceses and Longitudinal Approach 3. The Diffusion Process of Cohabitation and Time 4. Socio-Demographic Factors and the Influence of Institutional Contexts 5. Research Design: Combining Micro and Macro in a Comparative Perspective 6. Living Independently, Marrying and the Diffusion of Cohabitation 7. Conclusions
Paragon: QoS-aware scheduling for heterogeneous datacenters

Large-scale datacenters (DCs) host tens of thousands of diverse applications each day. However, interference between colocated workloads and the difficulty to match applications to one of the many hardware platforms available can degrade performance, violating the quality of service (QoS) guarantees that many cloud workloads require. While previous work has identified the impact of heterogeneity and interference, existing solutions are computationally intensive, cannot be applied online and do not scale beyond few applications. We present Paragon, an online and scalable DC scheduler that is heterogeneity and interference-aware. Paragon is derived from robust analytical methods and instead of profiling each application in detail, it leverages information the system already has about applications it has previously seen. It uses collaborative filtering techniques to quickly and accurately classify an unknown, incoming workload with respect to heterogeneity and interference in multiple shared resources, by identifying similarities to previously scheduled applications. The classification allows Paragon to greedily schedule applications in a manner that minimizes interference and maximizes server utilization. Paragon scales to tens of thousands of servers with marginal scheduling overheads in terms of time or state. We evaluate Paragon with a wide range of workload scenarios, on both small and large-scale systems, including 1,000 servers on EC2. For a 2,500-workload scenario, Paragon enforces performance guarantees for 91% of applications, while significantly improving utilization. In comparison, heterogeneity-oblivious, interference-oblivious and least-loaded schedulers only provide similar guarantees for 14%, 11% and 3% of workloads. The differences are more striking in oversubscribed scenarios where resource efficiency is more critical.
Effects of chronic stress and high-fat diet on metabolic and nutritional parameters in Wistar rats.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was assess the role of chronic stress on the metabolic and nutritional profile of rats exposed to a high-fat diet. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-day-old male Wistar rats (70-100 g) were distributed into four groups: normal-diet (NC), chronic stress (St), high-fat diet (HD), and chronic stress/high-fat diet (HD/St). Stress consisted at immobilization during 15 weeks, 5 times per week, 1h per day; and exposure to the high-fat diet lasted 15 weeks. Nutritional and metabolic parameters were assessed. The level of significance was 5%. RESULTS The HD group had final body weight, total fat, as well as insulin and leptin increased, and they were insulin resistant. The St and HD/St had arterial hypertension and increased levels of corticosterone. Stress blocked the effects of the high-fat diet. CONCLUSION Chronic stress prevented the appearance of obesity. Our results help to clarify the mechanisms involved in metabolic and nutritional dysfunction, and contribute to clinical cases linked to stress and high-fat diet.
Physicochemical parameters and subunit composition of yeast phosphofructokinase.

The properties of proteolytically non-modified phosphofructokinase from baker's yeast were investigated by means of hydrodynamic, electrophoretic, and chemical methods. The sedimentation coefficient shows a linear dependence on the protein concentration down to 0.01 mg/ml. The sedimentation coefficient has been determined to be S020,w= 20.81 S. At concentrations of the enzyme at less than 0.01 mg/ml a significant decrease of this value was found. The partial specific volume of the enzyme as determined by three different methods at 20°C is v2= 0.742 ml/g. From equilibrium sedimentation a molecular weight of 835000 ± 32000 was calculated for the native enzyme. Amino acid analysis of the enzyme was performed and the number of half-cystine residues determined as 11/100000 g is in good agreement with the number of titratable –SH groups after denaturation of the enzyme. The subunit molecular weight was determined by applying equilibrium sedimentation in the presence of sodium dodecylsulphate. Taking into account that 0.37 g of dodecylsulphate is bound per g of the enzyme protein as found by equilibrium dialysis, a subunit molecular weight of 104000 could be calculated. This value is about 15% smaller than that obtained by gel electrophoresis in the presence of sodium dodecylsulphate. Evidently, yeast phosphofructokinase seems to be octameric. Limited proteolysis in the presence of proteinase B from yeast was investigated by following the alterations of the sedimentation coefficient, the molecular weight, and the subunit pattern of the enzyme. During partial proteolytic degradation the molecular weight of the native enzyme decreases by about 230000. This diminution is in accordance with the difference in the molecular weight per subunit if an octameric composition is considered.
Differences in the Fecal Concentrations and Genetic Diversities of Campylobacter jejuni Populations among Individual Cows in Two Dairy Herds

ABSTRACT Dairy cows have been identified as common carriers of Campylobacter jejuni, which causes many of the human gastroenteritis cases reported worldwide. To design on-farm management practices that control the human infection sourced from dairy cows, the first step is to acquire an understanding of the excretion patterns of the cow reservoir. We monitored the same 35 cows from two dairy farms for C. jejuni excretion fortnightly for up to 12 months. The objective was to examine the concentration of C. jejuni and assess the genetic relationship of the C. jejuni populations excreted by individual cows. Significant differences (P < 0.01) in C. jejuni fecal concentration were observed among the 35 cows, with median concentrations that varied by up to 3.6 log10 · g−1 feces. A total of 36 different genotypes were identified from the 514 positive samples by using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC)-PCR. Although 22 of these genotypes were excreted by more than one cow, the analysis of frequencies and distribution of the genotypes by model-based statistics revealed a high degree of individuality in the C. jejuni population in each cow. The observed variation in the frequency of excretion of a genotype among cows and the analysis by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of these genotypes suggest that excretion of C. jejuni in high numbers is due to a successful adaptation of a particular genotype to a particular cow's gut environment, but that animal-related factors render some individual cows resistant to colonization by particular genotypes. The reasons for differences in C. jejuni colonization of animals warrant further investigation.
Innovation Sequences over Iterated Offerings: A Relative Innovation, Comfort, and Stimulation Framework of Consumer Responses

Innovations commonly involve changes to iterated market offerings (e.g., new games, car models, film sequels). To better understand consumer iteration responses, the authors develop and test a theoretical framework grounded in (1) prior innovations serving as reference states (comparators) for later innovations and (2) consumer desires for both comfort and stimulation. In Study 1's online game, prior innovations and loss aversion (greater loss than gain impact) moderate evaluations of current innovations, whereby an introduction-weaker-stronger innovation sequence (Periods 1–3 of four periods) generates more entertainment than an introduction-stronger-weaker sequence because the former's weak-opening-then-rise does less harm than the latter's strong-opening-then-drop. Study 2 replicates Study 1 and shows that an introduction-weaker-weaker sequence produces enough habituation and diminishing negative returns to outperform an introduction-stronger-weaker sequence at Period 4. Study 3 offers marketplace corroboration with a film industry test in which minor (fewer) innovations perform better (e.g., sales, return on investment) earlier in franchises, whereas major (many) innovations perform better later, thereby reconciling prior research's opposing prescriptions for the use of major versus minor sequel innovations. The framework and results implicate carefully sequenced innovations for managing consumer iteration responses, including the possibility of interspersing weaker/minor innovations among stronger/major innovations.
Discourse comprehension intervention for high‐functioning students with autism spectrum disorders: preliminary findings from a school‐based study

Many students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate comprehension difficulties. In the present study, 12 high-functioning Swedish students with ASD (aged 10–15 years) took part in a naturalistic classroom-based intervention to support comprehension of connected narrative discourse. An effective approach for supporting discourse comprehension in children with ASD was assumed to include: (i) providing teachers and students with a shared and explicit set of concepts for talking and thinking about the activity of comprehension, that (ii) can structure the child's discourse comprehension under scaffolding and modelling from the teacher. In the pre-testing session, the students with ASD presented with poor discourse comprehension but receptive vocabulary and reading decoding skills close to normative performance. Post-intervention test results, following 4 weeks of training, indicated specific and significant improvements in discourse comprehension. Support for the potential of this type of teaching was also obtained from teachers and students. The teachers reported that they would continue to use the same or similar comprehension instruction for 11 out of 12 students, and for multiple reasons, and students were also mostly positive to the training. Implications for practice and further research are discussed, as are limitations of the study.