Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can the Production Network Be the Testbed?

A persistent problem in computer network research is validation. When deciding how to evaluate a new feature or bug fix, a researcher or operator must trade-off realism (in terms of scale, actual user traffic, real equipment) and cost (larger scale costs more money, real user traffic likely requires downtime, and real equipment requires vendor adoption which can take years). Building a realistic testbed is hard because "real" networking takes place on closed, commercial switches and routers with special purpose hardware. But if we build our testbed from software switches, they run several orders of magnitude slower. Even if we build a realistic network testbed, it is hard to scale, because it is special purpose and is in addition to the regular network. It needs its own location, support and dedicated links. For a testbed to have global reach takes investment beyond the reach of most researchers. In this paper, we describe a way to build a testbed that is embedded in--and thus grows with--the network. The technique--embodied in our first prototype, FlowVisor--slices the network hardware by placing a layer between the control plane and the data plane. We demonstrate that FlowVisor slices our own production network, with legacy protocols running in their own protected slice, alongside experiments created by researchers. The basic idea is that if unmodified hardware supports some basic primitives (in our prototype, Open-Flow, but others are possible), then a worldwide testbed can ride on the coat-tails of deployments, at no extra expense. Further, we evaluate the performance impact and describe how FlowVisor is deployed at seven other campuses as part of a wider evaluation platform.
A Fully Synthetic Globo H Carbohydrate Vaccine Induces a Focused Humoral Response in Prostate Cancer Patients: A Proof of Principle.

Human trials on the globo H carbohydrate vaccine (see picture, KLH=the carrier protein keyhole limpet hemocyanin) show that it produces strong IgM, and in some cases IgG, responses in patients with progressive and recurrent prostate cancer. Furthermore, these antibodies not only recognize synthetic antigens, but also globo H-positive tumors in biopsy extracts and tumor tissues.
Geotechnical factors in seismic design of foundations state-of-the-art report

This paper revises the factors that influence the behavior of foundations in seismic environments. It discusses aspects related with seismic load definition, dynamic soil properties, field and laboratory testing equipment, geoseismic instrumentation of prototypes, foundation seismic stability, use of artificial intelligence, among others. It also points out areas where more research is needed to better our knowledge on the physics of the problem and to improve experimental and numerical techniques, with the purpose of making more reliable and less costly foundation systems.
Establishing wireless conference calls under delay constraints

A prevailing feature of mobile telephony systems is that the cell where a mobile user is located may be unknown. Therefore when the system is to establish a call between users it may need to search, or page, all the cells that it suspects the users are located in, to find the cells where the users currently reside. The search consumes expensive wireless links and so it is desirable to develop search techniques that page as few cells as possible.We consider cellular systems with c cells and m mobile users roaming among the cells. The location of the users is uncertain as given by probability distribution vectors. Whenever the system needs to find specific users, it conducts a search operation lasting some number of rounds (the delay constraint). In each round the system may check an arbitrary subset of cells to see which users are located there. In this setting the problem of finding one user with minimum expected number of cells searched is known to be solved optimally in polynomial time.In this paper we address the problem of finding several users with the same optimization goal. This task is motivated by the problem of establishing a conference call between mobile users. We first show that the problem is NP-hard. Then we prove that a natural and simple heuristic is a e/e-1 approximation solution.
Impact of behavioral integrity on organizational identification: the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between leader’s behavioral integrity and employees’ organizational identification as well as to test the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics on that relationship. Design/methodology/approach Data encompass 969 employees from 19 five-star hotels in Turkey. The relationship between behavioral integrity and organizational identification and the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics on that relationship were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and moderated hierarchical regression analyses. Findings The PLS-SEM and moderated hierarchical regression analyses results reveal that there was a significant positive relationship between leader’s behavioral integrity and employees’ organizational identification. In addition, the positive relationship between behavioral integrity and organizational identification was weaker when both power distance and organizational politics were higher compared to that when they were lower. Practical implications This study showed that leader’s behavioral integrity enhanced employees’ organizational identification. Leaders need to show the perceived alignment between their words and deeds and strive to form high quality leader–follower exchanges to create a trust-based culture that satisfies the necessary affective and cognitive components required for trust formation. Moreover, the results of this study indicated that perceived organizational politics weakened employees’ identification with their organizations. Organizational practices and policies, especially human resource practices, should be carefully designed and implemented as to prevent organizational politics, an important source of employee dissatisfaction and distrust. Originality/value The study provides new insights into the influence that leader’s behavioral integrity may have on employees’ organizational identification and the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics in the link between behavioral integrity and employees’ identification with their organizations. This paper also offers a practical assistance to employees in the hospitality industry and their leaders interested in fostering organizational identification and lowering perceived organizational politics.
CHANGES OF 1ST GRADE SCHOOL CHILDREN’S EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL COMPETENCES IN TANZPRO-BIODANZA INTERVENTION GROUP

The aim of this study is to investigate changes of 1st grade school children’s (age 6 -7) emotional and social competences in TANZPRO-Biodanza intervention group. In total 22 sessions were carried out during the school year 2014 / 2015 - from the beginning of October, 2014 until the end of May, 2015. The Emotion Questionnaire (Rydell et al., 2003) parents’ version was used to evaluate emotional competence – emotionality and emotion regulation. Prosocial scale, Internalizing and Externalizing scale of The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman,1997) parents‘ versions were used to measure social competence, i.e., prosocial behaviour and nonexistence of behavioural problems. Testing was performed in 3 time points – before intervention, after 10 sessions, and after intervention. Pre and post intervention results of social and emotional competence revealed different changes of experimental (n = 10) and control (n = 9) group pupils. Experimental group pupils showed statistically significant improvement in emotion regulation outcomes, prosocial and internalizing behaviour, but control group pupils showed decrease in emotion regulation outcomes and increase of internalizing behaviour. Both between-group and within- group analysis indicated, that internalizing behaviour results have most pronounced changes. Repeated measures ANOVA and Post hoc test with Bonferroni adjustment revealed statistically significant time effect for experimental group pupils (F(2,18)=4.81, p=0.02, η2=0.35) and tendency level with 90% probability for control group pupils (F(2,16)=3.40, p=0.06, η2=0.30). Saliva cortisol showed decrease in pre and post levels, in some sessions achieving level of significance.
Phase II study to investigate the efficacy, safety, and pharmacokinetics of sorafenib in Japanese patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE Sorafenib (Nexavar) is an oral multi-kinase inhibitor that targets tumor growth and angiogenesis. This phase II study investigated efficacy, safety, and pharmacokinetics of sorafenib in Japanese patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). METHODS Nonrandomized, open-label study in Japanese patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma who had received nephrectomy and failed >/=1 cytokine-containing therapy. The primary endpoint was response rate. Patients received sorafenib 400 mg twice daily (b.i.d.) on a continuous dosing schedule. RESULTS A total of 129 patients (median age 63 years) were valid for intention-to-treat analyses. Confirmed partial responses were observed in 16 (12.4%) patients, and investigators assessed that 19 (14.7%) of the patients achieved a partial response. Stable disease was reported in 93 (72.1%) patients, and 103 (80.5%) patients had tumor shrinkage. Median progression-free survival was 224 days and the 25th percentile of overall survival was estimated at 288 days. The most frequently occurring drug-related adverse events (any grade) were elevated lipase (56%), hand-foot skin reaction (55%), alopecia (39%), increased amylase (38%), rash/desquamation (37%), and diarrhea (34%). A total of 14 (10.7%) patients had serious sorafenib-related adverse events, including one adverse event of worst grade 5 (dyspnea occurred 35 days after the last dose of study medication). The C(trough,steady state) values in RCC patients (n = 63) receiving sorafenib 400 mg b.i. d. were similar to those obtained from a Japanese phase I study involving patients with mixed solid tumors. CONCLUSION Sorafenib showed encouraging efficacy and was well tolerated in Japanese patients with metastatic RCC.
A Review of Bioactive Release from Nerve Conduits as a Neurotherapeutic Strategy for Neuronal Growth in Peripheral Nerve Injury

Peripheral nerve regeneration strategies employ the use of polymeric engineered nerve conduits encompassed with components of a delivery system. This allows for the controlled and sustained release of neurotrophic growth factors for the enhancement of the innate regenerative capacity of the injured nerves. This review article focuses on the delivery of neurotrophic factors (NTFs) and the importance of the parameters that control release kinetics in the delivery of optimal quantities of NTFs for improved therapeutic effect and prevention of dose dumping. Studies utilizing various controlled-release strategies, in attempt to obtain ideal release kinetics, have been reviewed in this paper. Release strategies discussed include affinity-based models, crosslinking techniques, and layer-by-layer technologies. Currently available synthetic hollow nerve conduits, an alternative to the nerve autografts, have proven to be successful in the bridging and regeneration of primarily the short transected nerve gaps in several patient cases. However, current research emphasizes on the development of more advanced nerve conduits able to simulate the effectiveness of the autograft which includes, in particular, the ability to deliver growth factors.
The Multilingual Forest : Investigating High-quality Parallel Corpus Development

This thesis explores the development of parallel treebanks, collections of language data consisting of texts and their translations, with syntactic annotation and alignment, linking words, phrases, and sentences to show translation equivalence. We describe the semi-manual annotation of the SMULTRON parallel treebank, consisting of 1,000 sentences in English, German and Swedish. This description is the starting point for answering the first of two questions in this thesis.What issues need to be considered to achieve a high-quality, consistent,parallel treebank? The units of annotation and the choice of annotation schemes are crucial for quality, and some automated processing is necessary to increase the size. Automatic quality checks and evaluation are essential, but manual quality control is still needed to achieve high quality.Additionally, we explore improving the automatically created annotation for one language, using information available from the annotation of the other languages. This leads us to the second of the two questions in this thesis.Can we improve automatic annotation by projecting information available in the other languages? Experiments with automatic alignment, which is projected from two language pairs, L1–L2 and L1–L3, onto the third pair, L2–L3, show an improvement in precision, in particular if the projected alignment is intersected with the system alignment. We also construct a test collection for experiments on annotation projection to resolve prepositional phrase attachment ambiguities. While majority vote projection improves the annotation, compared to the basic automatic annotation, using linguistic clues to correct the annotation before majority vote projection is even better, although more laborious. However, some structural errors cannot be corrected by projection at all, as different languages have different wording, and thus different structures.
Testing the universal stellar IMF on the metallicity distribution in the bulges of the Milky Way and M 31

Aims. We test whether the universal initial mass function (UIMF) or the integrated galaxial IMF (IGIMF) can be employed to explain the metallicity distribution (MD) of giants in the Galactic bulge. Methods. We make use of a single-zone chemical evolution model developed for the Milky Way bulge in the context of an inside-out model for the formation of the Galaxy. We checked whether it is possible to constrain the yields above 80 Mby forcing the UIMF and required that the resulting MD matches the observed ones. We also extended the analysis to the bulge of M 31 to investigate a possible variation of the IMF among galactic bulges. Several parameters that have an impact on stellar evolution (star-formation efficiency, gas infall timescale) are varied. Results. We show that it is not possible to satisfactorily reproduce the observed metallicity distribution in the two galactic bulges unless assuming a flatter IMF (x ≤ 1.1) than the universal one. Conclusions. We conlude that it is necessary to assume a variation in the IMF among the various environments.
In vivo ocular efficacy profile of mapracorat, a novel selective glucocorticoid receptor agonist, in rabbit models of ocular disease.

PURPOSE To compare the efficacy of mapracorat (formerly ZK-245186, and subsequently BOL-303242-X), a novel selective glucocorticoid receptor agonist (SEGRA), with that of dexamethasone (DEX) in rabbit models of ocular disease. The effects of topical BOL-303242-X and DEX on intraocular pressure (IOP) and body weight changes were also evaluated. METHODS Dry eye was induced by atropine sulfate administration and was treated with saline, BOL-303242-X (0.1%-1.0%), DEX (0.1%), Restasis 0.05% (Allergan, Inc., Irvine, CA), or Refresh Endura (Allergan, Inc.) three times per day for 7 to 8 days. For paracentesis studies, vehicle, BOL-303242-X (0.1%, 0.5%, and 1.0%), or DEX (0.1%) were repeatedly administered topically 3 hours before paracentesis and continued for 90 minutes afterward. For IOP and body weight measurements, right eyes of rabbits were topically treated with vehicle, BOL-303242-X (1.0% or 0.1%), or DEX (0.1%) four times per day for 6 weeks. RESULTS In the dry eye model, BOL-303242-X and DEX were fully efficacious, maintaining tear volume and tear breakup time (TBUT) at baseline levels. Although Restasis improved tear volume compared with vehicle, no changes were observed in TBUT. In the paracentesis study, BOL-303242-X and DEX improved ocular inflammation. BOL-303242-X reduced protein and PGE(2) levels. Finally, BOL-303242-X showed no effects on integrated IOP or body weight, whereas DEX significantly increased integrated IOP and prevented the increase of body weight observed in the vehicle-treated animals. CONCLUSIONS BOL-303242-X shows full anti-inflammatory efficacy (similar to DEX) in experimental models of dry eye and postoperative inflammation while demonstrating reduced effects in IOP and body weight. These data indicate that mapracorat, a SEGRA, shows efficacy similar to that of traditional steroids while exhibiting an improved side effect profile in IOP and muscle wasting.
Atmospheric depositional fluxes of 7Be and 210Pb at Galveston and College Station, Texas

The bulk depositional fluxes of 210Pb and 7Be were measured at a coastal (Galveston) and an inland (College Station) station for about 3 years, between 1989 and 1991. The annual depositional fluxes of 7Be and 210Pb at Galveston during this period varied by a factor of about 2.5, between 8.9 and 23.2 disintegrations per minute (dpm) cm−2 yr−1, with a mean of 14.7 dpm cm−2 yr−1 for 7Be, and 0.67 and 1.71 dpm cm−2 yr−1, with a mean of 1.03 dpm cm−2 yr−1 for 210Pb, respectively. The precipitation-normalized 7Be flux increases with increasing amount of precipitation. There is no systematic and consistent seasonal trend in the depositional fluxes for 7Be or for 210Pb. The volume-weighted 210Pb concentrations, when normalized to the amount of precipitation, seem to be constant over the time period of this study. Four to six heavy rain events (> 5 cm) in a single day account for 20–30% of the annual deposition of 7Be and 210Pb. Such events account, however, for only about 4–6% of the total number of rainy days in a year. The dry depositional fluxes of these nuclides appear to be a significant fraction of the bulk depositional flux only during the months when there is very little rain. The fraction of dry to total depositional flux of 210Pb appears to be higher than that of 7Be. The strong positive correlation between 7Be and 210Pb depositional fluxes indicates that the flux of both nuclides is controlled by scavenging processes by local precipitation. This correlation also indicates that a major portion of the air masses that brings precipitation to Galveston and College Station is of continental origin. Our data therefore suggest that 7Be and 210Pb cannot be used as independent atmospheric tracers in our coastal station. This observation is consistent with those observed at many other continental and coastal stations.
Comprehensive analysis of aberrantly expressed lncRNAs and construction of ceRNA network in gastric cancer

Gastric cancer remains fifth most common cancer often diagnosed at an advanced stage and is the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) involved in various cellular pathways are essential for tumor occurrence and progression and they have high potential to promote or suppress the expression of many genes. In this study, we profiled 19 selected cancer-associated lncRNAs in thirty gastric adenocarcinomas and matching normal tissues by qRT-PCR. Our results showed that most of the lncRNAs were significantly upregulated (12/19). Further, we performed bioinformatic screening of miRNAs that share common miRNA response elements (MREs) with lncRNAs and their downstream mRNA targets. The prediction identified three microRNAs (miR-21, miR-145 and miR-148a) and five gastric cancer-specific target genes (EGFR, KLF4, DNMT1 and AGO4) which also showed strong correlation with lncRNAs in regression analysis. Finally, we constructed an integrated lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA interaction network of the candidate genes to understand the post-transcriptional gene regulation. The ceRNA network analysis revealed that the differentially regulated miR-21 and miR-148a were playing as central candidates coordinating sponging activity of the lncRNAs analyzed (H19, TUG1 and MALAT1) in this study and the overexpression of H19 and miR-21 could be a signature event of gastric tumorigenesis that could serve as prognostic indicators and therapeutic targets.
Sex And Portfolio Investment

We attempt to answer why sex is nearly ubiquitous when asexual reproduction is ostensibly more efficient than sexual reproduction. From the perspective of a genetic allele, each individual bearing that allele is akin to a stock share yielding dividends equal to that individual's number of offspring, and the totality of individuals bearing the allele is its portfolio investment. Alleles compete over portfolio growth, and evolutionary reproduction strategies are essentially on-line learning algorithms seeking improved portfolio growth, with sexual reproduction a goal-directed algorithmic exploration of genotype space by sampling in each generation. The model assumes a stochastically changing environment but not weak selection. We show that in finite population models the algorithm of sexual reproduction yields, with high probability, higher expected growth than the algorithm of asexual reproduction does, proposing this as an explanation to why a majority of species reproduce sexually.
Band 3 Missense Mutations and Stomatocytosis: Insight into the Molecular Mechanism Responsible for Monovalent Cation Leak

Missense mutations in the erythroid band 3 protein (Anion Exchanger 1) have been associated with hereditary stomatocytosis. Features of cation leaky red cells combined with functional expression of the mutated protein led to the conclusion that the AE1 point mutations were responsible for Na+ and K+ leak through a conductive mechanism. A molecular mechanism explaining mutated AE1-linked stomatocytosis involves changes in AE1 transport properties that become leaky to Na+ and K+. However, another explanation suggests that point-mutated AE1 could regulate a cation leak through other transporters. This short paper intends to discuss these two alternatives.
A bidimensional fluid system with competing interactions: spontaneous and induced pattern formation

In this paper we present a study of pattern formation in bidimensional systems with competing short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions. The interaction parameters are chosen in such a way as to allow us to analyse two different situations: the spontaneous pattern formation due to the presence of strong competing interactions on different length scales and the pattern formation as a response to an external modulating potential when the system is close to its Lifshitz point. We compare different Monte Carlo techniques showing that the parallel tempering technique represents a promising approach for the study of such systems and we present detailed results for the specific heat and the structural properties. We also present random phase approximation predictions concerning spontaneous pattern formation (or microphase separation), as well as linear response theory predictions concerning the induced pattern formation due to the presence of an external modulating field. In particular we observe that the response of our systems to external fields is much stronger than the response of a Lennard-Jones fluid.