Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Megamodelling and Etymology

Is a model of a model, a metamodel? Is the relational model a metamodel? Is it a model? What is a component metamodel? Is it a model of a component model? The word MODEL is subject to a lot of debates in Model Driven Engineering. Add the notion of metamodel on top of it and you will just enter what some people call the Meta-muddle. Recently megamodels have been proposed to avoid the meta-muddle. This approach is very promising but it does not solve however the primary problem. That is, even a simple use of the word Model could lead to misunderstanding and confusion. This paper tackles this problem from its very source: the polysemic nature of the word MODEL. The evolution and semantic variations of the word MODEL are modelled from many different perspectives. This papers tells how the prefix MED in indo-european has lead, five millenniums after, to the acronym MDE, and this via the word MODEL. Based on an extensive study of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and etymological sources, it is shown that the many senses of the word MODEL can be clustered into four groups, namely model-as-representation, model-as-example, model-as-type, and model-as-mold. All these groups are fundamental to understand the real nature of Model Driven Engineering. Megamodels and Etymology are indeed keys to avoid the Meta-muddle.on.
Principal Component Analysis of spectral coefficients for mesh watermarking

This paper proposes a new robust 3-D object blind watermarking method using constraints in the spectral domain. Mesh watermarking in spectral domain has the property of spreading the information in unpredictable ways, thus increasing the security of the watermark. In the proposed method, firstly, the Laplacian matrix of the graphical object mesh is eigen-decomposed. The coefficients corresponding to the higher spectra are split into sets and each set is used for embedding one bit. A bit of 1 is embedded by introducing an asymmetry in the 3-D distribution of the spectral coefficients from the given set, while the distribution symmetry is enforced in the case when embedding a bit of 0. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used for embedding the constraints in the spectral domain by ensuring a minimal distortion. Comparison results are provided for various attacks.
Hybrid MOSFET/CNFET based power gating structure

This paper proposes a new hybrid MOSFET /carbon nanotube FET (CNFET) power gating structure using 32nm technology at a low voltage (0.6V). The power gating structure is one of the most effective methods to reduce the power dissipation of systems in sleep mode, but it suffers from increased propagation delay due to the high threshold voltage of power switches in the low voltage region. In this paper, to reduce the propagation delay of the power gating structure while keeping low leakage power in the sleep mode, the CNFETs are deployed as a power switch. This hybrid structure reduces the time gap in switching over from silicon MOSFET to CNFET technology. For a trade-off between wake-up overhead and leakage power saving, a four-power-mode PG structure using back-gate biasing of the CNFET switches is also proposed. The simulation results are compared to those of the MOSFET power gating designed 32nm technology.
Seasonal variation in physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep in a sample of UK adults

Abstract Background: Physical activity (PA), sedentary behaviour (SB), sleep and diet have all been associated with increased risk for chronic disease. Seasonality is often overlooked as a determinant of these behaviours in adults. Currently, no study has simultaneously monitored these behaviours in UK adults to assess seasonal variation. Aim: The present study investigated whether PA, SB, sleep and diet differed over season in UK adults. Subjects and methods: Forty-six adults (72% female; age = 41.7 ± 14.4 years, BMI = 24.9 ± 4.4 kg/m2) completed four 7-day monitoring periods; one during each season of the year. The ActiGraph GT1M was used to monitor PA and SB. Daily sleep diaries monitored time spent in bed (TIB) and total sleep time (TST). The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) assessed diet. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to identify seasonal differences in behaviours. Results: Light-intensity PA was significantly higher in summer and spring (p < 0.001). SB and TIB were significantly higher in winter (p < 0.01). There were no seasonal variations detected in moderate–vigorous PA, TST or diet (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Findings support the concept that health promotion campaigns need to encourage year-round participation in light intensity PA, whilst limiting SB, particularly during the winter months.
A nimble decompression algorithm for ZigBee firmware update in smart home environment

Smart home environment is typically comprised of two parts: a home gateway and a number of home appliances. One of the challenges faced by ZigBee is its resource-efficient firmware update. A commonly used method is to compress the firmware before sending it to the ZigBee end nodes. The receiver side, i.e., the ZigBee end nodes, have limited resources in terms of storage and communication bandwidth. Hence the key issue here is how to make the decompression process use as little resources as possible. Based on the existing work this paper goes one step further to propose a nimble decompression algorithm called HHD, whose technical essence is to turn a Huffman tree that represents the firmware to an array which is much smaller. Its nimbleness is reflected in two aspects: storage usage and decompression time. Performance evaluations have shown that HHD has outperformed the conventional algorithms such as Huffman coding by fifty percent on average storage usage and by twenty folds on average decompression time usage.
User Intent-Oriented Video QoE with Emotion Detection Networking

With the ever-growing number of users enjoying online video service in mobile environments, video streaming services have been dominating the mobile traffic. It can be predicted that a small improvement in the user's watching experience will cause a substantial leap in profitability in terms of content providers and distributors, network operators and service providers for mobile videos. Though recent years have witnessed effective efforts to improve a user's video quality of experience (QoE) by the use of big data for analyzing users' viewing behaviors based on large-scale, video- viewing history datasets, it is very challenging to precisely analyze users' hidden intents and feelings when they are watching online videos. In addition to obtain a better video QoE, we propose to introduce user's emotional reactions into QoE assessment. In this scheme, first, the user's mood is detected in a real time fashion via emotion detection networking. Then, a mood matching process is performed to gain the similarity of the user's intent and the video content property in terms of emotion design. Finally, a novel, decision tree-based adjustment model is proposed to characterize the relationship between QoE and various factors, including buffer ratio, average bitrate, and the user's emotions. Our study opens a road for improving video QoE based on emotion detection networking.
Dependency Forest for Statistical Machine Translation

We propose a structure called dependency forest for statistical machine translation. A dependency forest compactly represents multiple dependency trees. We develop new algorithms for extracting string-to-dependency rules and training dependency language models. Our forest-based string-to-dependency system obtains significant improvements ranging from 1.36 to 1.46 BLEU points over the tree-based baseline on the NIST 2004/2005/2006 Chinese-English test sets.
Monetary, Food, and Social Rewards Induce Similar Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer Effects

Multiple types of reward, such as money, food or social approval, are capable of driving behavior. However, most previous investigations have only focused on one of these reward classes in isolation, as such it is not clear whether different reward classes have a unique influence on instrumental responding or whether the subjective value of the reward, rather than the reward type per se, is most important in driving behavior. Here, we investigate behavior using a well-established reward paradigm, Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), and three different reward types: monetary, food and social rewards. The subjective value of each reward type was matched using a modified Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction where subjective reward value was expressed through physical effort using a bimanual grip force task. We measured the influence of reward-associated stimuli on how participants distributed forces between hands when reaching a target effort range on the screen bimanually and on how much time participants spent in this target range. Participants spent significantly more time in the target range (15% ± 2% maximal voluntary contraction) when a stimulus was presented that was associated with a reward used during instrumental conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning compared to a stimulus associated with a neutral outcome (i.e., general PIT). The strength of the PIT effect was modulated by subjective value (i.e., individuals who showed a stronger PIT effect rated the value of rewards more highly), but not by reward type, demonstrating that stimuli of all reward types were able to act as appetitive reinforcers and influenced instrumental responding, when matched to the same subjective reward value. This is the first demonstration that individually matched monetary, food and social rewards are equally effective as appetitive reinforcers in PIT. These findings strengthen the hypotheses that the subjective value is crucial for how much reward-associated stimuli influence behavior.
Nucleus retroambiguus projections to the periaqueductal gray in the cat

The nucleus retroambiguus (NRA) of the caudal medulla is a relay nucleus by which neurons of the mesencephalic periaqueductal gray (PAG) reach motoneurons of pharynx, larynx, soft palate, intercostal and abdominal muscles, and several muscles of the hindlimbs. These PAG‐NRA‐motoneuronal projections are thought to play a role in survival behaviors, such as vocalization and mating behavior. In the present combined antero‐ and retrograde tracing study in the cat, we sought to determine whether the NRA, apart from the neurons projecting to motoneurons, also contains cells projecting back to the PAG. After injections of WGA‐HRP in the caudal and intermediate PAG, labeled neurons were observed in the NRA, with a slight contralateral preponderance. In contrast, after injections in the rostral PAG or adjacent deep tectal layers, no or very few labeled neurons were present in the NRA. After injection of [3H]leucine in the NRA, anterograde labeling was present in the most caudal ventrolateral and dorsolateral PAG, and slightly more rostrally in the lateral PAG, mainly contralaterally. When the [3H]leucine injection site extended medially into the medullary lateral tegmental field, labeling was found in most parts of the PAG as well as in the adjoining deep tectal layers. No labeled fibers were found in the dorsolateral PAG, and only a few were found in the rostral PAG. Because the termination pattern of the NRA fibers in the PAG overlaps with that of the sacral cord projections to the PAG, it is suggested that the NRA‐PAG projections play a role in the control of motor functions related to mating behavior. J. Comp. Neurol. 445:47–58, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Inverted L shape slotted micro strip patch antenna for IMT, WiMAX and WLAN applications

This paper demonstrates the design and performance analysis of an inverted L shape slotted micro strip patch antenna. The FR4 material having relative permittivity of 4.4 and thickness of 1.57mm has been employed as a substrate. The upper surface of substrate has a slotted square shaped patch and the lower surface of substrate has a defected ground surface. The slotted defected ground surface and an inverted L shaped slot in the patch yields enhancement in bandwidth and improves the return loss. The proposed antenna design has an impedance bandwidth of 3.13GHz. The antenna has resonant frequencies at 3.05GHz, 4.15GHz and 5.80GHz within the operating frequency range of 2.91GHz - 6.04 GHz. The antenna has resonant frequencies of 3.05GHz, 4.15GHz and 5.80GHz with return loss of -18.32 dB, -34.56 dB and -32.08 dB, respectively. The CST (Computer Simulation Technology) Microwave Studio 2014 has been used to design and simulate the antenna structure. The anechoic chamber and E5071C network analyzer has been used for the testing of fabricated antenna design. The performance analysis of simulated and fabricated antenna concludes that the theoretical results approximately match with the practical results. The proposed antenna design can be suitably used for IMT, WLAN and WiMAX applications.
Identification and Characterization of Nuclear Pore Complex Components in Arabidopsis thaliana[W][OA]

Interactive proteomics technology was used to identify Arabidopsis nucleoporins, which are components of the nuclear pore complex (NPC). Nucleoporin domain organization is similar in plants, vertebrates, and yeast. This finding suggests that most NPC structures are conserved throughout eukaryotes. The nuclear pore complex (NPC) facilitates nucleocytoplasmic transport, a crucial process for various cellular activities. The NPC comprises ~30 nucleoporins and is well characterized in vertebrates and yeast. However, only eight plant nucleoporins have been identified, and little information is available about the complete molecular structure of plant NPCs. In this study, an interactive proteomic approach was used to identify Arabidopsis thaliana nucleoporins. A series of five cycles of interactive proteomic analysis was performed using green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged nucleoporins. The identified nucleoporins were then cloned and subcellular localization analyses were performed. We found that the plant NPC contains at least 30 nucleoporins, 22 of which had not been previously annotated. Surprisingly, plant nucleoporins shared a similar domain organization to their vertebrate (human) and yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) counterparts. Moreover, the plant nucleoporins exhibited higher sequence homology to vertebrate nucleoporins than to yeast nucleoporins. Plant NPCs lacked seven components (NUCLEOPORIN358 [Nup358], Nup188, Nup153, Nup45, Nup37, NUCLEAR DIVISION CYCLE1, and PORE MEMBRANE PROTEIN OF 121 kD) that were present in vertebrate NPCs. However, plants possessed a nucleoporin, Nup136/Nup1, that contained Phe-Gly repeats, and sequence analysis failed to identify a vertebrate homolog for this protein. Interestingly, Nup136-GFP showed greater mobility on the nuclear envelope than did other nucleoporins, and a Nup136/Nup1 deficiency caused various defects in plant development. These findings provide valuable new information about plant NPC structure and function.
Programming MPSoC platforms: road works ahead!

This paper summarizes a special session on multi-core/multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC) programming challenges. The current trend towards MPSoC platforms in most computing domains does not only mean a radical change in computer architecture. Even more important from a SW developer's viewpoint, at the same time the classical sequential von Neumann programming model needs to be overcome. Efficient utilization of the MPSoC HW resources demands for radically new models and corresponding SW development tools, capable of exploiting the available parallelism and guaranteeing bug-free parallel SW. While several standards are established in the high-performance computing domain (e.g. OpenMP), it is clear that more innovations are required for successful deployment of heterogeneous embedded MPSoC. On the other hand, at least for coming years, the freedom for disruptive programming technologies is limited by the huge amount of certified sequential code that demands for a more pragmatic, gradual tool and code replacement strategy.
Rudolf: Interactive Rule Refinement System for Fraud Detection

Credit card frauds are unauthorized transactions that are made or attempted by a person or an organization that is not authorized by the card holders. In addition to machine learning-based techniques, credit card companies often employ domain experts to manually specify rules that exploit domain knowledge for improving the detection process. Over time, however, as new (fraudulent and legitimate) transaction arrive, these rules need to be updated and refined to capture the evolving (fraud and legitimate) activity patterns. The goal of the RUDOLF system that is demonstrated here is to guide and assist domain experts in this challenging task. RUDOLF automatically determines a best set of candidate adaptations to existing rules to capture all fraudulent transactions and, respectively, omit all legitimate transactions. The proposed modifications can then be further refined by domain experts based on their domain knowledge, and the process can be repeated until the experts are satisfied with the resulting rules. Our experimental results on real-life datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach. We showcase RUDOLF with two demonstration scenarios: detecting credit card frauds and network attacks. Our demonstration will engage the VLDB audience by allowing them to play the role of a security expert, a credit card fraudster, or a network attacker.
Fourier Transforms of Finite Chirps

Chirps arise in many signal processing applications. While chirps have been extensively studied as functions over both the real line and the integers, less attention has been paid to the study of chirps over finite groups. We study the existence and properties of chirps over finite cyclic groups of integers. In particular, we introduce a new definition of a finite chirp which is slightly more general than those that have been previously used. We explicitly compute the discrete Fourier transforms of these chirps, yielding results that are number-theoretic in nature. As a consequence of these results, we determine the degree to which the elements of certain finite tight frames are well distributed.
Dose-related effects of magnesium on myocardial function in the neonate.

The antagonistic effects of magnesium ion as a calcium ion blocker may decrease calcium influx associated with ischemia. However, the effect of magnesium on the preischemic neonatal myocardium has not been investigated previously. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the administration of increasing doses of magnesium on left ventricular performance in the neonate. We assessed left ventricular function (pressure-volume data obtained by the conductance catheter/micromanometer technique) in three groups (n = 6 in each) of newborn pigs (3 to 5 days old) differing with respect to magnesium concentrations. End-systolic elastance did not change during infusion in group A (magnesium = 1.2 mmol/L), whereas in groups B (magnesium = 8 mmol/L) and C (magnesium = 16 mmol/L) it decreased significantly (P < .05) to 67 +/- 6% and 44 +/- 8% of baseline, respectively. The decrease in end-systolic elastance was associated with a significant reduction in cardiac output (P < .05) and stroke work (P < .05) in group C. After administration of magnesium, end-systolic elastance returned to baseline in group B in contrast to group C (78 +/- 3% of baseline value, P < .05). The slope constant of the end-diastolic pressure-volume relation decreased significantly (P < .05) from the preinfusion baseline values of 0.42 +/- 0.08 mL-1 in group B and 0.46 +/- 0.05 mL-1 in group C to 0.3 +/- 0.04 and 0.26 +/- 0.03 mL-1, respectively, versus no change in group A. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A strict evaluation method on the number of conditions for the SHA-1 collision search

This paper proposes a new algorithm for evaluating the number of chaining variable conditions(CVCs) in the selecting step of a distrubance vector (DV) for the analysis of SHA-1 collision attack. The algorithm is constructed by combining the following four strategies, "Strict Differential Bit Compression", "DV expansion", "Precise Counting Rules in Every Step" and "Differential Path Confirmation for Rounds 2 to 4", that can evaluate the number of CVCs morestrictly compared with the previous approach.
The Clinical Viewpoint: Definitions, Limitations of RECIST, Practical Considerations of Measurement

In selecting an endpoint in clinical trial design, it is important to consider that the endpoint is both reliably measured and clinically meaningful. As such, overall survival (OS) has traditionally been considered the most clinically relevant and convincing endpoint in clinical trial design as long as it is accompanied by preservation in quality of life. However, progression-free survival (PFS) is increasingly more prominent in clinical trial design because of feasibility issues (smaller sample sizes and shorter follow-up). PFS has the advantage of taking into account not only responsive disease, but stable disease as well, an issue of particular importance in the relapsed and refractory setting in which therapies are often associated with a minimal to nil response but may still confer a survival advantage. Finally, PFS has a significant advantage in molecularly selected populations, in whom OS advantages are difficult to detect due to the effects of crossover. With an understanding of the limitations and biases that are introduced with PFS as a primary endpoint, we believe that PFS is not only a viable but also a necessary alternative to OS in assessing the efficacy of selected novel-targeted therapies in molecularly defined cancer populations. Ultimately, the selection of a clinical trial endpoint should not be based on a one-size-fits all approach; rather, it should be based on the specifics of the therapeutic strategy being tested and the population under study. Clin Cancer Res; 19(10); 2629–36. ©2013 AACR.
Cost- and Latency-Efficient Redundant Data Storage in the Cloud

With the steady increase of offered cloud storage services, they became a popular alternative to local storage systems. Beside several benefits, the usage of cloud storage services can offer, they have also some downsides like potential vendor lock-in or unavailability. Different pricing models, storage technologies and changing storage requirements are further complicating the selection of the best fitting storage solution. In this work, we present a heuristic optimization approach that optimizes the placement of data on cloud-based storage services in a redundant, cost- and latency-efficient way while considering user-defined Quality of Service requirements. The presented approach uses monitored data access patterns to find the best fitting storage solution. Through extensive evaluations, we show that our approach saves up to 30% of the storage cost and reduces the upload and download times by up to 48% and 69% in comparison to a baseline that follows a state-of-the-art approach.
When Random Play is Optimal Against an Adversary

We analyze a sequential game between a Gambler and a Casino. The Gambler allocates bets from a limited budget over a fixed menu of gambling events that are offered at equal time intervals, and the Casino chooses a binary loss outcome for each of the events. We derive the optimal min-max strategies for both participants. We then prove that the minimum cumulative loss of the Gambler, assuming optimal play by the Casino, is exactly a well-known combinatorial quantity: the expected number of draws needed to complete a multiple set of “cards” in the generalized Coupon Collector’s Problem. We show that this quantity and the optimal strategy of the Gambler can be efficiently estimated from a simple random walk.