Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reducing Randomization in the Power of Two Choices Load Balancing Algorithm

This paper proposes a new version of the Power of Two Choices, SQ(d), load balancing algorithm that improves the performance of the classical model based on the power of two choices randomized load balancing. This model considers jobs that arrive to a dispatcher as a Poisson stream of rate λn, λ 1, at a set of n servers. Using the power of two choices, the dispatcher chooses for each job some d constant independently and uniformly from the n servers in a random way, and sends the job to the server with the fewest number of jobs. This algorithm offers advantage over the load balancing based on shortest queue discipline, because it offers a good performance, and reduces the overhead over the servers and over the communication network. In this paper, we propose a new version, Shortest Queue of d with Randomization and Round Robin Policies, SQ-RR(d), that combines randomization techniques and static local balancing based on round robin policy. In this new version the dispatcher chooses the d servers as follows: one is selected using round robin policy and the d - 1 servers are chosen independently and uniformly in a random way from the η servers. Then, the dispatcher sends the job to the server with the fewest number of jobs. We demonstrate with an analytical approximation of this approach, that this new version improves the performance obtained with the classical solution for d 2, and obtains similar results for d 2, included systems at 99 percent of capacity. Furthermore, we provide simulations that demonstrate the analytical approximation developed and show the behavior of this algorithm with realistic workloads based on Google datacenter traces.
05-Ga Isotopic Ages for Transvaal Mississippi Valley – Type Deposits : Evidence for Large-Scale Hydrothermal Circulation around the Bushveld Igneous Complex , South Africa

The known dimensions of hydrothermal fluid circulation associated with emplacement of the 2.055-Ga Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC) are extended with new isotopic ages for Paleoproterozoic mineral deposits in wallrocks (Transvaal Supergroup) surrounding the BIC. A fluorite-rich Mississippi Valley–type (MVT) deposit in the Zeerust district, dated at 2.05 Ga (Sm-Nd isochron age), has Nd isotopic compositions that are identical to coeval F-rich Lebowa Granite late in the BIC intrusive sequence, suggesting transport of magmatic fluids ∼100 km beyond the present margins of the BIC. Hydrothermal illite from the Zn-Pb MVT Bushy Park deposit, dated at 2.05 Ga by K-Ar geochronology, links widespread MVT deposits of the Kaapvaal craton to large-scale basinal brine circulation associated with emplacement of the BIC. These data, in combination with gold vein, phosphate mineral, and paleomagnetic resetting ages, indicate a regional-scale Bushveld-age hydrothermal system circulating 700 km outward from the present margins of the BIC. Online enhancement: appendix.
Trypanosoma brucei variant surface glycoprotein regulation involves coupled activation/inactivation and chromatin remodeling of expression sites

Trypanosoma brucei is an extracellular protozoan parasite that cycles between mammalian hosts and the tsetse vector. In bloodstream‐form trypanosomes, only one variant surface glycoprotein gene (VSG) expression site (ES) is active at any time. Transcriptional switching between ESs results in antigenic variation. No VSG is transcribed in the insect procyclic stage. We have used bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase (T7RNAP) to study the transcriptional accessibility of ES chromatin in vivo. We show that T7RNAP‐mediated transcription from chromosomally integrated T7 promoters is repressed along the entire length of the ES in the procyclic form, but not in the bloodstream form, suggesting that the accessible chromatin of inactive bloodstream‐form ESs is remodeled upon differentiation to yield a structure that is no longer permissive for T7RNAP‐mediated transcription. In the bloodstream form, replacing the active ES promoter with a T7 promoter, which is incapable of sustaining high‐level transcription of the entire ES, prompts an ES switch. These data suggest two distinct mechanisms for ES regulation: a chromatin‐mediated developmental silencing of the ES in the procyclic form and a rapid coupled mechanism for ES activation and inactivation in the bloodstream form.
Sources and Correlates of Performance Enhancement in Audiovisual Speech Perception

ii Acknowledgements iv Co-Authorship v List of Figures vii List of Abbreviations xii Chapter 1 : Introduction 1 Chapter 2 : Performance Variability in Audiovisual Speech-in-Noise Perception 29 Chapter 3 : Measuring Performance Gain in an Audiovisual Speech-in-Noise task 57 Chapter 4 : Lexical Congruency between Unimodal Confusions Accounts for Some (But not All) of the Performance Enhancement in Audiovisual Speech Perception 87 Chapter 5 : Susceptibility to the McGurk Illusion is Negatively Correlated with Performance in an Audiovisual Speech-in-Noise Task 114 Chapter 6 : Discussion 133 References 149 Appendix A : Word List with Phonemic Transcription 173
Colorimetric measurement of serum bromide with a bromate-rosaniline method.

A procedure is presented for measuring bromide in serum filtrates, after protein has been precipitated with a HCl—tungstate reagent. The bromide in the filtrate is oxidized to bromate with hypochlorite. The resulting bromate reacts with added bromide to release bromine. Bromine reacts with rosaniline to form bromorosaniline, which is measured colorimetrically. The method is specific, sensitive, and reproducible. Bilirubin and hemoglobin do not interfere appreciably with the procedure, and iodine interference is negligible if less than 80 mg is present per 100 ml. Various factors affecting the sensitivity of the method have been studied. Preliminary data on the estimation of bromide in urine are also presented.
Natasha: Faster Non-Convex Stochastic Optimization via Strongly Non-Convex Parameter

Given a nonconvex function that is an average of $n$ smooth functions, we design stochastic first-order methods to find its approximate stationary points. The convergence of our new methods depends on the smallest (negative) eigenvalue $-\sigma$ of the Hessian, a parameter that describes how nonconvex the function is. Our methods outperform known results for a range of parameter $\sigma$, and can be used to find approximate local minima. Our result implies an interesting dichotomy: there exists a threshold $\sigma_0$ so that the currently fastest methods for $\sigma>\sigma_0$ and for $\sigma<\sigma_0$ have different behaviors: the former scales with $n^{2/3}$ and the latter scales with $n^{3/4}$.
Segment Duration and the ‘Mora’ in Japanese

Abstract An experiment was conducted to test two predictions entailed by the hypothesis that Japanese morae have constant durations. The first prediction is that a segment’s duration will conform to its moraic status in an utterance; a consonant will be longer when it is syllabic than when it occurs in a GV mora, and phonemically long consonants will have durations that reflect their moraic structure. The second prediction is that segment lengths will vary to compensate for the intrinsic durations of adjacent segments in order to equalize mora lengths. Neither of these predictions was borne out.
Feedback in Group Psychotherapy for Eating Disorders: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Objective: To investigate the effect of client feedback in group psychotherapy on attendance and treatment outcome for patients with eating disorders. Method: We conducted a randomized clinical trial with central randomization stratified for diagnosis and treatment type according to a computer-generated allocation sequence concealed to the investigators. One-hundred and 59 adult participants, diagnosed with bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, or eating disorder not otherwise specified according to DSM–IV, were included. Eighty participants were allocated to the experimental group, and 79 participants to the control group. Both groups received 20–25 weekly group psychotherapy sessions. In the experimental group, participants gave and received feedback about therapy progress and alliance, measured before and after each session using the Outcome Rating Scale and the Group Session Rating Scale. The primary outcome was rate of attendance to treatment sessions; the secondary outcome was severity of eating disorder symptoms measured with the Eating Disorder Examination interview. Exploratory outcomes were psychological distress measured with the Symptom Checklist-90-R and the Outcome Rating Scale, social functioning measured with the Sheehan Disability Scale, and episodes of self-harm and suicide measured with a modified version of the Self-Harm Inventory. Results: Feedback compared with control did not affect the rate of attendance (0.59 vs. 0.58; p = .96), the severity of symptoms (2.03 vs. 2.02; p = .46), or any of the exploratory outcomes (p values from 0.06 to 0.67). Conclusions: Feedback neither increased attendance nor improved outcomes for outpatients in group psychotherapy for eating disorders. The results are discussed from different perspectives.
pkCSM: Predicting Small-Molecule Pharmacokinetic and Toxicity Properties Using Graph-Based Signatures

Drug development has a high attrition rate, with poor pharmacokinetic and safety properties a significant hurdle. Computational approaches may help minimize these risks. We have developed a novel approach (pkCSM) which uses graph-based signatures to develop predictive models of central ADMET properties for drug development. pkCSM performs as well or better than current methods. A freely accessible web server (http://structure.bioc.cam.ac.uk/pkcsm), which retains no information submitted to it, provides an integrated platform to rapidly evaluate pharmacokinetic and toxicity properties.
Guilt aversion and redistributive politics: A moral intuitionist approach

In mainstream economics individuals are supposed to be driven only by their self-interest. By contrast, surveys clearly show that people do care about fairness in their demand for redistribution. In this article, in the spirit of the new synthesis in moral psychology (Haidt, 2007: The new synthesis in moral psychology) the author proposes to modelize the voting behavior over redistribution as the interaction between (a) an automatic cognitive process which quickly generates intuitions on the fair level of redistribution, (b) a rational self-oriented reasoning which controls the feeling of guilt associated with fair intuitions. In addition, considering that guilt aversion depends on the cultural context, the author shows that the model exhibits a multiplicity of history-dependent steady states which may account for the huge difference of redistribution observed between Europe and the United States.
The evolution of morphology and fabric of a sand during shearing

Over the past 50 years, experimental studies have repeatedly demonstrated that the mechanical behaviour of sand is sensitive to the material fabric, i.e., the arrangement of the grains. Up until now there have been relatively few attempts to describe quantitatively the fabric of sands. In fact, most of our understanding of the link between the particle movements and interactions and the macro-scale response of granular materials, including sand, comes from discrete element modelling (DEM) and experiments on “analogue” sands with simple, idealized shapes. The aim of this study had been to describe quantitatively the particle morphology and fabric of reals and and their evolution under loading. The material investigated was Reigate sand (from Southeast England), a geologically old sand which, in its intact state, exhibits significant grain interlocking and nobonding. To explore the effects of fabric on the mechanical response of the soil, intact and reconstituted specimens both having similar densities were tested under triaxia lcompression. The specimens were impregnated with an epoxy resin at three different stages of shear deformation and small cores from each specimen were scanned using X-ray micro-tomography. Different systems and scanning parameters were explored in order to obtain three-dimensional high-resolution images with a voxel size of 5μm(0.018d50) and a quality level required for the identification of the individual particles and the surface defining each particle-particle contact.The quantification of particle size and shape has shown that breakage of fractured grains, along existing fissures, occurs both during reconstitution and shearing ofthe intact soil, a phenomenon that cannot be observed using invasive techniques such as sieve analysis. Statistical analyses of the distribution of fabric directional data in terms of particle orientations, contact normals, branch vectors and void orientations were carried out at each loading stage. It has been shown that the initial particle orientation fabric that develops during the deposition of the material tendsto persist during shearing, while the contact normals seem to be reorientated along the direction of the major principal stress in the post-peak regime. Different patterns were observed within the shear band as both the particles and the contact normals appeared to rotate towards the direction of the shear plane. The measurements from the tomographic data were complemented with a qualitative description of the morphology and fabric using SEM and optical microscope images of thin sections.
Efficient Parallel Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning

We propose a novel framework for efficient parallelization of deep reinforcement learning algorithms, enabling these algorithms to learn from multiple actors on a single machine. The framework is algorithm agnostic and can be applied to on-policy, off-policy, value based and policy gradient based algorithms. Given its inherent parallelism, the framework can be efficiently implemented on a GPU, allowing the usage of powerful models while significantly reducing training time. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework by implementing an advantage actor-critic algorithm on a GPU, using on-policy experiences and employing synchronous updates. Our algorithm achieves state-of-the-art performance on the Atari domain after only a few hours of training. Our framework thus opens the door for much faster experimentation on demanding problem domains. Our implementation is open-source and is made public at this https URL
A Proposal to Improve the Standard on the Shielding Effectiveness Measurements of Materials and Gaskets in a Reverberation Chamber

In this paper, a reexamined estimate of the test fixture validation factor (TFVF) of fixtures for shielding effectiveness (SE) measurements in a reverberation chamber is shown. The fundamental conditions for the applicability of the model shown here are a large aperture between the chambers, whose transmission cross section is well approximated by the geometrical optics, and an isolation between the chambers greater than or equal to 10 dB, as specified in this paper. The model is applicable for both nonmarginal and marginal SE values; but, in the latter case, the requested isolation between the two chambers has to be met with no sample in the aperture. For nonmarginal SE values, the conditions requested for the applicability of the model are practically the same as those requested in the standard IEC 61000-4-21. The model is applicable to SE measurements of gaskets as well. The results show that the TFVF used in the standard procedure IEC 61000-4-21 has to be updated to achieve more accurate measurements of SE in light of the studies conducted on this topic. We give such an update in this study.
A shorter time interval between first and second dengue infections is associated with protection from clinical illness in a school-based cohort in Thailand.

BACKGROUND Despite the strong association between secondary dengue virus (DENV) infections and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), the majority of secondary infections are subclinical or mild. The determinants of clinical severity remain unclear, though studies indicate a titer-dependent and time-dependent role of cross-protective anti-DENV antibodies. METHODS Data from 2 sequential prospective cohort studies were analyzed for subclinical and symptomatic DENV infections in schoolchildren in Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand (1998-2002 and 2004-2007). Children experiencing ≥ 1 DENV infection were selected as the population for analysis (contributing 2169 person-years of follow-up). RESULTS In total, 1696 children had ≥ 1 DENV infection detected during their enrollment; 268 experienced 2 or more infections. A shorter time interval between infections was associated with subclinical infection in children seronegative for DENV at enrollment, for whom a second-detected DENV infection is more likely to reflect a true second infection (average of 2.6 years between infections for DHF, 1.9 for DF, and 1.6 for subclinical infections). CONCLUSIONS These findings support a pathogenesis model where cross-reactive antibodies wane from higher-titer, protective levels to lower-titer, detrimental levels. This is one of the first studies of human subjects to suggest a window of cross-protection following DENV infection since Sabin's challenge studies in the 1940s.
Gender Differences in Self-Construal: How Generalizable Are Western Findings?

Abstract The authors used the Twenty Statements Test in 2 studies to investigate gender and country differences in the spontaneous self-descriptions of 811 college students from Hong Kong, India, Nepal, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe and 136 secondary school students from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The authors performed statistical analysis and found no significant gender differences in the percentage of responses classified as belonging to the idiocentric self in either study. However, the authors found significant Country effects in both studies for responses classified as representing the idiocentric self and some aspects of the collective self, and the authors found significant Country × Gender effects involving all 4 categories of the idiocentric self and the collective self for the college students. These findings raise questions about the generalizability of Western findings that males are more likely to espouse an independent conception of self than females. However, as the authors predicted, females were more likely to use small group self-descriptions than their male peers.
Body Mass Index and the Odds of Acute Injury in Children

Objective The objectives of this study were to determine (1) the association between body mass index (BMI) and acute injury and (2) the association between BMI and bone fracture in children. Methods Children 5 to 17 years old were recruited in the emergency department at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital. Cases included children treated for an injury, and control subjects were children without an injury in the past 12 months. Participants were administered a questionnaire to derive average activity level and demographic data. Weight and height measurements were taken to calculate BMI. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to estimate the odds of injury occurrence by BMI category and the impact of covariates. Results Logistical regression, after adjusting for age, sex, activity level, and income level, did not reveal an increased association between BMI and acute injury in overweight odds ratio (OR) = 0.90 (0.48–1.70) and obese OR = 1.18 (0.60–2.33) children. Secondary outcome analyses failed to show an increased association between BMI and fracture in overweight OR = 0.44 (0.12, 1.66) and obese OR = 1.02 (0.31, 3.32) children. Conclusions This study did not find increasing BMI to be associated with increased acute injury or bone fracture in children.
On the Complexity of Random Quantum Computations and the Jones Polynomial

There is a natural relationship between Jones polynomials and quantum computation. We use this relationship to show that the complexity of evaluating relative-error approximations of Jones polynomials can be used to bound the classical complexity of approximately simulating random quantum computations. We prove that random quantum computations cannot be classically simulated up to a constant total variation distance, under the assumption that (1) the Polynomial Hierarchy does not collapse and (2) the average-case complexity of relative-error approximations of the Jones polynomial matches the worst-case complexity over a constant fraction of random links. Our results provide a straightforward relationship between the approximation of Jones polynomials and the complexity of random quantum computations.
SAUDI STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO SUPPORT LEARNING

The Pew Research Center (2015) reported that 74% of the Internet users use social networking sites worldwide. Studies have provided evidence that social media is promising for increasing collaboration and cooperation in project –based learning. However, few empirical studies investigate the use of social media in educational settings, especially in the Middle East. This study investigates factors and barriers affecting the attitudes toward using social media in one of Saudi Arabia’s universities, King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah, with the intent of understanding when and how social media can best be used to support learning. The hypothesized model was developed through the social learning theories of Bandura and Vygotsky, the Technology Acceptance Model of Davis, and the Diffusion of Innovation model of Rogers. Five hundred ten students (214 male and 296 female) participated in an electronic survey, and its findings reveal the students have positive attitudes (M= 3.99, SD=.76) towards using social media to support learning. The most frequently used tool by students was WhatsApp (M= 4.60, SD=.88), with which students have the highest experience (M= 4.58, SD=.84). Students reported facing two major barriers when utilizing social media which are some of the social media contents are against the students’ religion (M= 4.12, SD= 1.1) and concerns about privacy and security issues related to the usage of social media (M= 3.72, SD=1.19). Only five predictors were significant determinants of attitudes of the students including: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, subjective norms, experience with Skype, and age. There was a significant relationship between the overall attitudes of the students and their intentions, with r(508)= . 67, p=. 00. As social media tools continue to attract students’ attention, more research on developing effective instructional methods for using social media to support students’ learning, with consideration of cultural and religious aspects, is needed.
Developmental Readiness for Leadership: The Differential Effects of Leadership Courses on Creating "Ready, Willing, and Able" Leaders.

The development of effective leadership capacity involves multiple factors including increasing students’ leadership self-efficacy, motivation to lead, and leadership skills. This study of 165 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory leadership theory course explores the degree to which students report changes in these three areas of leadership from the beginning to the end of the course. Our analysis showed two important findings. First, students report significant gains in leadership self-efficacy, transformational and transactional leadership skill, and each measured form of motivation to lead at the conclusion of the course. Second, a closer examination shows that student learning is not across-the-board but, rather, differentiated. Students experience significantly different outcomes depending on their levels of self-efficacy and motivation to lead when they enter the course. These findings not only have broad implications for the way colleges and universities structure curricula around leadership development, but they also inform theoretical model-building regarding the process of student leadership development. DOI: 1012806/V13/I3/R1 Journal of Leadership Education Summer 2014