Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variable length packet switches: delay analysis of crossbar switches under Poisson and self similar traffic

We consider crossbar switches for switching variable length packets. Analysis of such switches is important in the context of IP switches where the packet interarrival times and packet lengths are drawn from continuous distributions. Assuming a single stage M/spl times/N switch we obtain a very general throughput delay model for Poisson packet arrivals and exponential service times. We then analyze an M/spl times/N switch for self similar packet arrivals and exponential packet lengths. An MMPP (Markov modulated Poisson process) based self similar arrival process model corresponding to the arrival rate, the autocorrelation, the Hurst parameter and the time scales over which burstiness exists in the input process is first obtained using results from Andersen and Nielsen (1998). We then use queuing theory available for MMPP/G/1 queues to model the switch performance for self similar packet arrivals. The results from the analytical model are compared against those from a simulation model that is driven by traces that are statistically similar to the Bellcore traces. We also analyse the effect of link multiplicities (speedup) to the output and asymmetries in the input traffic.
Pressured Into Crime: An Overview of General Strain Theory

1. Why Do Individuals Engage in Crime? 2. Why Do Strains Increase the Likelihood of Crime? 3. What Types of Strains Are Most Likely To Cause Crime? 4. Why Are Some Individuals More Likely Than Others To Respond to Strains With Crime? 5. How Does General Strain Theory Explain Patterns of Offending Over the Life Course? 6. How Does General Strain Theory Explain Gender, Class, and Race/Ethnic Differences in Offending? 7. How Does General Strain Theory Explain Community and Societal Differences in Offending? 8. What Recommendations Does General Strain Theory Make for Reducing Crime? 9. An Overview of General Strain Theory
Utilizing Actors to Simulate Clients in Social Work Student Role Plays

Abstract The social work education literature contains limited discussion of the use of role play in the classroom. This article discusses the logistics of recruiting and utilizing professionally-trained actors to simulate clients in social work role plays. Promising results from assessments of BSW and MSW students with actor-simulated clients are presented. Students described their experiences with the actor-simulated clients in very positive terms. These responses did not statistically vary by program, age, gender, or race.
RR Lyrae variables in Galactic globular clusters: IV. Synthetic HB and RR Lyrae predictions

We present theoretical predictions concerning horizontal branch stars in globular clusters, including RR Lyrae vari- ables, as derived from synthetic procedures collating evolutionary and pulsational constraints. On this basis, we explore the predicted behavior of the pulsators as a function of the horizontal branch morphology and over the metallicity range Z = 0.0001 to 0.006, revealing an encouraging concordance with the observed distribution of fundamentalised periods with metallicity. Theoretical relations connecting periods to K magnitudes and BV or VI Wesenheit functions are presented, both appearing quite independent of the horizontal branch morphology only with Z ≥ 0.001. Predictions concerning the parameter R are also discussed and compared under various assumptions about the horizontal branch reference luminosity level.
Learning the Optimal Transformation of Salient Features for Image Classification

In this paper, we address the problem of recovering an optimal salient image descriptor transformation for image classification. Our method involves two steps. Firstly, a binary salient map is generated to specify the regions of interest for subsequent image feature extraction. To this end, an optimal cut-off value is recovered by maximising Fisher’s linear discriminant separability measure so as to separate the salient regions from the background of the scene. Next, image descriptors are extracted in the foreground region in order to be optimally transformed. The descriptor optimisation problem is cast in a regularised risk minimisation setting, in which the aim of computation is to recover the optimal transformation up to a cost function. The cost function is convex and can be solved using quadratic programming. The results on unsegmented Oxford Flowers database show that the proposed method can achieve classification performance that are comparable to those provided by alternatives elsewhere in the literature which employ pre-segmented images.
Circadian Typology: A Comprehensive Review

The interest in the systematic study of the circadian typology (CT) is relatively recent and has developed rapidly in the two last decades. All the existing data suggest that this individual difference affects our biological and psychological functioning, not only in health, but also in disease. In the present study, we review the current literature concerning the psychometric properties and validity of CT measures as well as individual, environmental and genetic factors that influence the CT. We present a brief overview of the biological markers that are used to define differences between CT groups (sleep–wake cycle, body temperature, cortisol and melatonin), and we assess the implications for CT and adjustment to shiftwork and jet lag. We also review the differences between CT in terms of cognitive abilities, personality traits and the incidence of psychiatric disorders. When necessary, we have emphasized the methodological limitations that exist today and suggested some future avenues of work in order to overcome these. This is a new field of interest to professionals in many different areas (research, labor, academic and clinical), and this review provides a state of the art discussion to allow professionals to integrate chronobiological aspects of human behavior into their daily practice.
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Risk of bacterial vaginosis, Trichomonas vaginalis and Candida albicans infection among new users of combined hormonal contraception vs LNG-IUS

We, the Editors and Publisher of The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care, have retracted the following article: Mohamed Rezk, Tarek Sayyed, Alaa Masood & Ragab Dawood (2017) Risk of bacterial vaginosis, Trichomonas vaginalis and Candida albicans infection among new users of combined hormonal contraception vs LNG-IUS, The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care, 22:5, 344–348, DOI: 10.1080/13625187.2017. 1365835 Since publication, significant concerns have been raised about the integrity of the data and reported results in the article. When approached for an explanation, the authors have been unable to address the concerns raised and have not been able to provide their original data or sufficient supporting information. As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article. The corresponding author listed in this publication has been informed. The authors do not agree with the retraction. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.
Selected Topics : Emergency Radiology ULTRASONOGRAPHY BY EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS IN PATIENTS WITH SUSPECTED URETERAL COLIC

e Abstract—We performed a prospective study of patients with suspected ureteral colic to evaluate the test characteristics of bedside renal ultrasonography (US) performed by emergency physicians (EPs) for detecting hydronephrosis, and to evaluate how US can be used to predict the likelihood of nephrolithiasis. Thirteen EPs performed US, recorded the presence of hydronephrosis, and made an assessment of the likelihood of nephrolithiasis. All patients underwent i.v. pyelography (IVP) or unenhanced helical computed tomography (CT). There were 126 patients in the study: 84 underwent IVP; 42 underwent helical CT. Test characteristics of bedside US for detecting hydronephrosis were: sensitivity 72%, specificity 73%, positive predictive value (PPV) 85%, negative predictive value (NPV) 54%, accuracy 72%. The PPV and NPV for the ability of the EP to predict nephrolithiasis after performing US were 86% and 75%, respectively. We conclude that bedside US performed by EPs may be used to detect hydronephrosis and help predict the presence of nephrolithiasis. © 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.
Virtual methods for enhanced efficiency of teaching and learning processes

This paper introduces some new analysis results by the authors in possibilities for introduction of virtual methods based higher education courses in teaching and learning practice. They evaluated some recently published modeling methods considering the fact that the demand for e-learning in engineering is generated by frequent and substantial changes of industrial technology that require lifetime learning while the time for education is very short. In the paper, characteristics of course models are outlined and evaluated for teaching and learning in virtual environment. Following this, key issues are discussed for modeling of courses and application of course models. In the rest of the paper demand driven constraints, and details about content of course model are considered.
Architecture design with STT-RAM: Opportunities and challenges

The emerging spin-transfer torque magnetic random-access memory (STT-RAM) has attracted a lot of interest from both academia and industry in recent years. It has been considered as a promising replacement of SRAM and DRAM in the cache and memory system design thanks to many advantages, including non-volatility, low leakage power, SRAM comparable read performance and read energy consumption, higher density than SRAM, better scalability than conventional CMOS technologies, and good CMOS compatibility. However, the disadvantages of STT-RAM, such as higher write energy and longer write latency than SRAM, also bring design challenges. This paper introduces state-of-the-art architectural approaches to adopt STT-RAM in the cache and memory system design by taking advantage of the opportunities brought by STT-RAM as well as overcoming the challenges.
Extinction-Reconsolidation Boundaries: Key to Persistent Attenuation of Fear Memories

Reversing Pavlov Memories of fearful associations, such as hearing a tone before receiving a low-voltage shock, are labile when they are retrieved, such that the association can be extinguished or reconsolidated. Monfils et al. (p. 951, published online 2 April) demonstrate that applying a standard extinction treatment (sounding the tone multiple times in the absence of any shocks) within a window of time during which reconsolidation would normally occur has the effect of overwriting the original memory. Rats treated in this fashion display much lower levels of renewal (fear induced by sounding the tone once by itself), reinstatement (fear induced by giving the shock once by itself), and spontaneous recovery. Behavioral manipulations can reverse a learned fearful association in rats. Dysregulation of the fear system is at the core of many psychiatric disorders. Much progress has been made in uncovering the neural basis of fear learning through studies in which associative emotional memories are formed by pairing an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS; e.g., a tone) to an unconditioned stimulus (US; e.g., a shock). Despite recent advances, the question of how to persistently weaken aversive CS-US associations, or dampen traumatic memories in pathological cases, remains a major dilemma. Two paradigms (blockade of reconsolidation and extinction) have been used in the laboratory to reduce acquired fear. Unfortunately, their clinical efficacy is limited: Reconsolidation blockade typically requires potentially toxic drugs, and extinction is not permanent. Here, we describe a behavioral design in which a fear memory in rats is destabilized and reinterpreted as safe by presenting an isolated retrieval trial before an extinction session. This procedure permanently attenuates the fear memory without the use of drugs.
Forecasting In ation Using Dynamic Model Averaging

We forecast quarterly US ination based on the generalized Phillips curve using econometric methods which incorporate dynamic model averaging. These methods not only allow for coe¢ cients to change over time, but also allow for the entire forecasting model to change over time. We nd that dynamic model averaging leads to substantial forecasting improvements over simple benchmark regressions and more sophisticated approaches such as those using time varying coe¢ cient models. We also provide evidence on which sets of predictors are relevant for forecasting in each period. Keywords: Bayesian, State space model, Phillips curve JEL Classi cation: E31, E37, C11, C53 We would like to thank three referees, the editor of this journal, participants at the 20th EC2 Conference in Real-Time Econometrics, the 6th EUROSTAT Colloquim on Modern Tools for Business Cycle Analysis, the European Central Bank, the Bundesbank, the Bank of England and the Universities of Aarhus, Cambridge, Lancaster, Namur and Queen Mary for helpful comments. This research was supported by the ESRC under grant RES-062-23-2646. Both authors are Fellows at the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis. yCorresponding author, Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde, 130 Rottenrow, Glasgow G4 0GE, UK. Email: Gary.Koop@strath.ac. uk
Dissociated small hand muscle involvement in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis detected by motor unit number estimates

In some patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the thenar hand is more severely affected than the hypothenar hand. To quantify the dissociated involvement, we examined the motor unit number estimate (MUNE) of both the abductor pollicis brevis (APB) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) muscles in 23 patients with ALS. Whereas ALS patients had significantly smaller MUNEs than normal subjects in both muscles, the extent of motor unit loss was significantly greater in the APB than ADM. Moreover, a simple comparison of the amplitude of compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) showed that ALS patients had significantly smaller APB/ADM ratios than normal subjects and patients with cervical spondylotic amyotrophy, bulbospinal muscular atrophy, or peripheral neuropathy. The more severe involvement of the APB probably reflects the specific pathophysiology in ALS, and possible mechanisms for the dissociated involvement are discussed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Muscle Nerve 22: 870–873, 1999
Learning Continuous Word Embedding with Metadata for Question Retrieval in Community Question Answering

Community question answering (cQA) has become an important issue due to the popularity of cQA archives on the web. This paper is concerned with the problem of question retrieval. Question retrieval in cQA archives aims to find the existing questions that are semantically equivalent or relevant to the queried questions. However, the lexical gap problem brings about new challenge for question retrieval in cQA. In this paper, we propose to learn continuous word embeddings with metadata of category information within cQA pages for question retrieval. To deal with the variable size of word embedding vectors, we employ the framework of fisher kernel to aggregated them into the fixedlength vectors. Experimental results on large-scale real world cQA data set show that our approach can significantly outperform state-of-the-art translation models and topic-based models for question re-
Multiple conformations of physiological membrane-bound cytochrome c.

One-tenth of cytochrome c (cyt c) remains bound to the inner mitochondrial membrane (IMM) at physiological ionic strength (I; i.e. , I approximately 150 mM), exhibiting decreased electron transport (ET) activity. We now show that this form of membrane-bound cyt c (MB-cyt c) can be obtained in vitro and that binding to membranes at low I generates an additional conformation with higher ET activity. This low I bound form of MB-cyt c (MBL-cyt c) exhibited intrinsic ET rates similar to those of electrostatically bound cyt c (EB-cyt c). The ET activity of IMM-bound MB-cyt c approached slowly that of MBL-cyt c or EB-cyt c, suggesting that MB-cyt c converts to MBL-cyt c while bound to IMM. When maintained at physiological I, both forms of MB-cyt c were released from the membrane, indicating that they convert to an EB-cyt c-like form. This process may be very dynamic in cellular mitochondria, as binding and release for both MB-cyt c forms increased considerably with temperature. I-Dependent binding of MB-cyt c does not require IMM, and it can be reproduced using large or small unilamellar vesicles (SUV). Using SUV-cyt c complexes, we characterized the secondary structure of MB-cyt c and MBL-cyt c by circular dichroism. Conformational analysis revealed that cyt c binding as MB-cyt c decreases its alpha-helical content (70-79%) and increases its beta-sheet up to 135%. The secondary structure of MBL-cyt c was similar to that of EB-cyt c and soluble cyt c, with a modest increase in beta-sheet. Taken together, our experiments suggest that physiological cyt c exists in soluble and membrane-bound conformations with similar ET activity, which may exchange very rapidly, and that soluble hydrophilic proteins can bind transiently to biomembranes.
FG-Rich Repeats of Nuclear Pore Proteins Form a Three-Dimensional Meshwork with Hydrogel-Like Properties

Nuclear pore complexes permit rapid passage of cargoes bound to nuclear transport receptors, but otherwise suppress nucleocytoplasmic fluxes of inert macromolecules ≥30 kilodaltons. To explain this selectivity, a sieve structure of the permeability barrier has been proposed that is created through reversible cross-linking between Phe and Gly (FG)–rich nucleoporin repeats. According to this model, nuclear transport receptors overcome the size limit of the sieve and catalyze their own nuclear pore-passage by a competitive disruption of adjacent inter-repeat contacts, which transiently opens adjoining meshes. Here, we found that phenylalanine-mediated inter-repeat interactions indeed cross-link FG-repeat domains into elastic and reversible hydrogels. Furthermore, we obtained evidence that such hydrogel formation is required for viability in yeast.
A reliability test-plan for series systems with components having stochastic failure rates

This paper proposes a reliability test plan for a series system, by considering the parameter /spl lambda//sub j/ of the exponential distribution to be a random variable having uniform distribution over [0, /spl theta//sub j/], j = 1, 2,. , n. Explicit expressions are obtained for the optimal values of the t/sub j/, when the number of components in the system is 2. The general solution, albeit implicit, has also been obtained when the number of components in a given system is /spl ges/3. Mathematical programming is used to find the optimal solution and to illustrate it with numerical results.
Position-Based Visual Servoing in Industrial Multirobot Cells Using a Hybrid Camera Configuration

This paper deals with the problem of position-based visual servoing in a multiarm robotic cell equipped with a hybrid eye-in-hand/eye-to-hand multicamera system. The proposed approach is based on the real-time estimation of the pose of a target object by using the extended Kalman filter. The data provided by all the cameras are selected by a suitable algorithm on the basis of the prediction of the object self-occlusions, as well as of the mutual occlusions caused by the robot links and tools. Only an optimal subset of image features is considered for feature extraction, thus ensuring high estimation accuracy with a computational cost independent of the number of cameras. A salient feature of the paper is the implementation of the proposed approach to the case of a robotic cell composed of two industrial robot manipulators. Two different case studies are presented to test the effectiveness of the hybrid camera configuration and the robustness of the visual servoing algorithm with respect to the occurrence of occlusions
Discriminative Robust Deep Dictionary Learning for Hyperspectral Image Classification

This paper proposes a new framework for deep learning that has been particularly tailored for hyperspectral image classification. We learn multiple levels of dictionaries in a robust fashion. The last layer is discriminative that learns a linear classifier. The training proceeds greedily; at a time, a single level of dictionary is learned and the coefficients used to train the next level. The coefficients from the final level are used for classification. Robustness is incorporated by minimizing the absolute deviations instead of the more popular Euclidean norm. The inbuilt robustness helps combat mixed noise (Gaussian and sparse) present in hyperspectral images. Results show that our proposed techniques outperform all other deep learning methods—deep belief network, stacked autoencoder, and convolutional neural network. The experiments have been carried out on both benchmark deep learning data sets (MNIST, CIFAR-10, and Street View House Numbers) as well as on real hyperspectral imaging data sets.
General Rules for Optimal Codon Choice

Different synonymous codons are favored by natural selection for translation efficiency and accuracy in different organisms. The rules governing the identities of favored codons in different organisms remain obscure. In fact, it is not known whether such rules exist or whether favored codons are chosen randomly in evolution in a process akin to a series of frozen accidents. Here, we study this question by identifying for the first time the favored codons in 675 bacteria, 52 archea, and 10 fungi. We use a number of tests to show that the identified codons are indeed likely to be favored and find that across all studied organisms the identity of favored codons tracks the GC content of the genomes. Once the effect of the genomic GC content on selectively favored codon choice is taken into account, additional universal amino acid specific rules governing the identity of favored codons become apparent. Our results provide for the first time a clear set of rules governing the evolution of selectively favored codon usage. Based on these results, we describe a putative scenario for how evolutionary shifts in the identity of selectively favored codons can occur without even temporary weakening of natural selection for codon bias.
Sindice at SemSearch 2010

In this report we describe the model which Sindice uses to dene, index and rank \entites" found on the web of data. We rst give a denition of entity representation and then describe both the query-dependent and query-independent ranking procedures and how they are combined in the Semantic Information Retrieval Engine (SIREn) of Sindice.
Transmission Performance Analysis of Three Different Channels in Optical Communication Systems

In this paper will have done comparative performance study for three different optical channels system, all the channels operated at the same optical transmitted with non return-to-zero (NRZ). Performance study is done for variable ranges 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 km for the different channels. Single Mode Fiber, Free Space Optical (FSO) Channel and optical wireless communication Channel (OWC) is observed that at low bit rate (10Gb/s/ch) per channel multiplexed optical system shows the most performance signal power, maximum Q Factor, minimum BER and eye pattern degrades. Results reveal the ability of improving the optical communication characteristics by using these channel and the optimum effect concluded at (5km) length of optical rang by using the OWC channel i.e.the quality factor and signal power were increased to reach (1550.7 ) and (-1.08dBm) respectively and MIN. BER is zero.