Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
"Forgiving" a missed daily dose.

The emergence and spread of transmitted drug resistance (TDR) poses a major threat to the success of the rapidly expanding antiretroviral treatment (ART) programs in resource-limited countries. The World Health Organization recommends the use of the HIV Drug Resistance Threshold Survey (HIVDR-TS) as an affordable means to monitor the presence of TDR in these settings. We report our experiences and results of the 2007 HIVDR-TS in Botswana, a country with one of the longest-existing national public ART programs in Africa. The HIVDR-TS and HIV-1 incidence testing were performed in the two largest national sites as part of the 2007 antenatal Botswana Sentinel Survey. The HIVDR-TS showed no significant drug resistance mutations (TDR less than 5%) in one site. TDR prevalence, however, could not be ascertained at the second site due to low sample size. The agreement between HIVDR-TS eligibility criteria and laboratory-based methodologies (i.e., BED-CEIA and LS-EIA) in identifying recently HIV-1 infected adults was poor. Five years following the establishment of Botswana's public ART program, the prevalence of TDR remains low. The HIVDR-TS methodology has limitations for low-density populations as in Botswana, where the majority of antenatal sites are too small to recruit sufficient numbers of patients. In addition, the eligibility criteria (age <25 years and parity (first pregnancy)) of the HIVDR-TS performed poorly in identifying recent HIV-1 infections in Botswana. An alternative sampling strategy should be considered for the surveillance of HIVDR in Botswana and similar geographic settings.
Some results on query processes and reconstruction functions for unconditionally secure 2-server 1-round binary private information retrieval protocols

In this paper, we investigate query processes and reconstruction functions for unconditionally secure 2-server 1-round binary private information retrieval (PIR) schemes. We begin by formulating a simplified model for PIR schemes which is equivalent to the usual model. We show that a query is equivalent to a boolean function of two variables, and we give a precise characterization of the boolean functions that can be used as "query pairs" to the two servers. We also consider several notions of "privacy" and we make a few remarks about the communication complexity of PIR schemes.
Paleoenvironmental record of Lake Hovsgol (Mongolia) in northeast Eurasia

Studies on paleoenvironmental changes are important to estimate future global warming induced by human activity. Information on paleoenvironmental changes in the northeast Eurasia has been collected by Baikal Drilling Project (BAIKAL DRILLING PROJECT GRouP 2000). Lake Hovsgol is located in the Lake Baikal basin at an altitude of 1667 m a.s. l. in the subarctic zone and is approximately 1200m higher than Lake Baikal (GouLDEN et al. 2006). Mean annual air temperatures of the lake area during the glacial period are assumed to have been lower than -15 oe; thus, it is possible that not only the lake surface was covered with perennial ice, but also that higher land plants almost disappeared during the glacial period. Organic components in lake sediments are chemical fossils of paleoenvironmental changes in the drainage basin and are extensively used as biomarkers to evaluate sources and sedimentary conditions of organic matter in various environments (MEYERS & ISHIWATARI 1993, MATSUMOTO et al. 2003). Here we report organic components in HDP04 sediment core from Lake Hovsgol to elucidate biological production, sources of organic matter, and paleoenvironmental changes during the last 1030 ka in the northeast Eurasia. These results are compared with Lake Baikal sediment core signals.
Stability Analysis and Improvements for Variable-Speed Multipole Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator-Based Wind Energy Conversion System

This paper discusses the stability issues of the permanent magnetic synchronous generator (PMSG)-based direct driven wind energy conversion system (WECS) and presents a torque compensation strategy to improve the system stability. The stability analysis shows that the drive train dynamics can significantly affect the system stability by introducing a low-frequency oscillatory mode and the stability margin can be enlarged with the slower generator torque control loop or the reduced power converter response. The torque compensation strategy contains a feed-forward compensator in the torque control loop, which is formulated based on the dc current injected into the dc link capacitor of the converters. With such compensation, the oscillatory mode is effectively suppressed and the stability of the WECS is improved. The simulation results verify the theoretical analysis as well as the small-signal and transient performance of the strategy.
Logistic Regression Model for Business Failures Prediction of Technology Industry in Thailand

Since the large number of parties involved in corporate failure or ‘business failure’, the avoidance of failure has always been an important issue in the field of corporate finance and business management. In this paper, the model was developed to predict business failure in Thailand particular in technology industry by using four variables from Altman’s model and adding one variable to the model. Descriptive statistics, correlation, and independent T-test are used for testing to see the characteristics of each variable on both failed and non-failed companies. The model was developed by using the stepwise logistic regression. Samples were developed by using financial information from private limited companies based on technology industry in Bangkok. The result from this empirical study can conclude that financial ratios are useful analytical techniques for forecasting financial health of companies in technology industry. The result of independent T-test has pointed out sales to total assets ratio is the only significant independent variable indicating significant differences between failed and non-failed group. The Nagelkerke R2 indicated 42.4% of the variation in the outcome variable. The predictability accuracy of the model is 77.8% which is under 95% confidence level.
Assessing power system state estimation accuracy with GPS-spoofed PMU Measurements

Power grids have evolved into cyber-networks equipped with high speed communications and advanced sensors. While this evolution has been monumental, the risk of cyber-attacks is growing. In grids, phasor measurement units (PMU)-equipped with GPS receivers-are now ubiquitously installed in widespread locations, while providing real time grid-visibility. Cooperatively, limited number of PMUs can enable state estimation (SE) routines. However, PMU measurements can be notably altered via a GPS spoofing attack and consequently causing a misleading depiction of the physical status of the system. Here, we evaluate the impact of a GPS time-synchronization attack on the grid's SE routines. Statistical information regarding the attacked estimates are derived with relevance to the actual state of the system. We also investigate bounds on the estimation bias introduced by the aforementioned attacks. Numerical examples are included to support the developed methods.
On Maximizing Diffusion Speed Over Social Networks With Strategic Users

A variety of models have been proposed and analyzed to understand how a new innovation (e.g., a technology, a product, or even a behavior) diffuses over a social network, broadly classified into either of epidemic-based or game-based ones. In this paper, we consider a game-based model, where each individual makes a selfish, rational choice in terms of its payoff in adopting the new innovation, but with some noise. We address the following two questions on the diffusion speed of a new innovation under the game-based model: (1) what is a good subset of individuals to seed for reducing the diffusion time significantly, i.e., convincing them to preadopt a new innovation and (2) how much diffusion time can be reduced by such a good seeding. For (1), we design near-optimal polynomial-time seeding algorithms for three representative classes of social network models, Erdös-Rényi, planted partition and geometrically structured graphs, and provide their performance guarantees in terms of approximation and complexity. For (2), we asymptotically quantify the diffusion time for these graph topologies; further derive the seed budget threshold above which the diffusion time is dramatically reduced, i.e., phase transition of diffusion time. Furthermore, based on our theoretical findings, we propose a practical seeding algorithm, called Practical Partitioning and Seeding (PrPaS) and demonstrate that PrPaS outperforms other baseline algorithms in terms of the diffusion speed over a real social network topology. We believe that our results provide new insights on how to seed over a social network depending on its connectivity structure, where individuals rationally adopt a new innovation.
Keeping it Short and Simple: Summarising Complex Event Sequences with Multivariate Patterns

We study how to obtain concise descriptions of discrete multivariate sequential data. In particular, how to do so in terms of rich multivariate sequential patterns that can capture potentially highly interesting (cor)relations between sequences. To this end we allow our pattern language to span over the domains (alphabets) of all sequences, allow patterns to overlap temporally, as well as allow for gaps in their occurrences. We formalise our goal by the Minimum Description Length principle, by which our objective is to discover the set of patterns that provides the most succinct description of the data. To discover high-quality pattern sets directly from data, we introduce Ditto, a highly efficient algorithm that approximates the ideal result very well. Experiments show that Ditto correctly discovers the patterns planted in synthetic data. Moreover, it scales favourably with the length of the data, the number of attributes, the alphabet sizes. On real data, ranging from sensor networks to annotated text, Ditto discovers easily interpretable summaries that provide clear insight in both the univariate and multivariate structure.
Dynamic Stability Analysis of Synchronverter-Dominated Microgrid Based on Bifurcation Theory

In the traditional power grid, inverter-inter-faced distributed energy resources are widely used in microgrids such as conventional synchronous generators (SGs) in the traditional power grid. They are expected to decrease the rotational inertia and spinning reserve capacity that are specific to SGs, while synchronverters can compensate for the loss. Thus, an increasing number of interfaced inverters may act as synchronverters in a microgrid. The dynamic stability of the synchronverter-dominated microgrid must thus be carefully evaluated to ensure the reliable operation of this type of system. This paper presents a nonlinear model of a synchronverter-dominated microgrid. The eigenvalues of the system state matrix, along with the participation factors, are analyzed to determine the predominant parameters affecting the stability. Bifurcation theory is then used to predict and describe the unstable phenomenon as the system parameters fluctuate; the effect of these parameters on the system stability is then examined. A simulation on MATLAB/Simulink and experiments were performed and results validated the presented analysis.
Involvement of Wnt Signaling Pathways in the Metamorphosis of the Bryozoan Bugula neritina

In this study, we analyzed the metamorphosis of the marine bryozoan Bugula neritina. We observed the morphogenesis of the ancestrula. We defined three distinct pre-ancestrula stages based on the anatomy of the developing polypide and the overall morphology of pre-ancestrula. We then used an annotation based enrichment analysis tool to analyze the B. neritina transcriptome and identified over-representation of genes related to Wnt signaling pathways, suggesting its involvement in metamorphosis. Finally, we studied the temporal-spatial gene expression studies of several Wnt pathway genes. We found that one of the Wnt ligand, BnWnt10, was expressed spatially opposite to the Wnt antagonist BnsFRP within the blastemas, which is the presumptive polypide. Down-stream components of the canonical Wnt signaling pathway were exclusively expressed in the blastemas. Bnβcatenin and BnFz5/8 were exclusively expressed in the blastemas throughout the metamorphosis. Based on the genes expression patterns, we propose that BnWnt10 and BnsFRP may relate to the patterning of the polypide, in which the two genes served as positional signals and contributed to the polarization of the blastemas. Another Wnt ligand, BnWnt6, was expressed in the apical part of the pre-ancestrula epidermis. Overall, our findings suggest that the Wnt signaling pathway may be important to the pattern formation of polypide and the development of epidermis.
USING HYBRID SURVEYING TECHNIQUES FOR DOCUMENTING THE LARGEST ANCIENT THEATRE IN GREECE

The paper discusses the photogrammetric documentation procedure of the ancient theatre of Dodoni. It is the largest ancient theatre in Greece; its planimetric extents are approximately 100 by 140 metres and its height 25-30 metres. The theatre was built in the 3rd century b.c. and reaches an audience capacity of over 17’000 people. The partly bad condition and the great extents of the object made it necessary to merge various surveying techniques in order to achieve the defined goal: the full documentation of the interior and exterior of the theatre. Due to the particularity of this study area (large extents, big height differences, parts of the theatre that were hardly accessible) three different cameras had to be employed for performing terrestrial and aerial photography, and additionally laserscanning had to be applied in order to produce the needed highly accurate DOM (Digital Object Model). Altogether approximately 33 millions laserscanner points and over 500 images had to be implemented into the workflow in order to achieve the wanted result. The paper describes the employed methodologies for handling such huge amounts of data in combination with the big number of acquired images, for producing a useful documentation product that would be the source for further stone deterioration analysis. Furthermore, gained experiences, aroused problems and the results of the project, as well as the evaluation of the employed strategies are reported in order to demonstrate the difficulties of such a compound study.
Proactive transaction scheduling for contention management

Hardware transactional memory offers a promising high performance and easier to program alternative to lock-based synchronization for creating parallel programs. This is particularly important as hardware manufacturers continue to put more cores on die. But transactional memory still has one main drawback: contention. Contention is caused by multiple transactions trying to speculatively modify the same memory location concurrently causing one or more transactions to abort and retry its execution. Contention serializes the execution, meaning high contention leads to very poor parallel performance. As more cores are added, contention worsens. To date contention-manager designs have been primarily reactive in nature and limited to various forms of randomized backoff to effectively stall contending transactions when conflicts occur. While backoff-based managers have been popular due to their simplicity, at higher core counts our analysis on the STAMP benchmark suite shows that backoff-based managers perform poorly. In particular, small groups of transactions create hot spots of contention that lead to this poor performance. We show these hot spots commonly consist of small sets of conflicts that occur in a predictable manner. To counter this challenge we introduce a dynamic contention management strategy that minimizes contention by using past history to identify when these hot spots will reoccur in the future and proactively schedule affected transactions around these hot spots. The strategy used predicts future contention and schedules to avoid it at runtime without the need for programmer input. Our experiments show that by using our proactive scheduling technique we outperform a backoff-based policy for a 16 processor system by an average of 85%.
Dine Combining Collaborative Filtering and Social Media to Make Better Restaurant Recommendations

Currently, to find a restaurant recommendation, a user may go online and visit one of many popular review-aggregation websites (Yelp and TripAdvisor are two popular examples). Rather than explicitly make recommendations, however, these sites present the user with an expansive list of local options and their average ratingscalculated from members’ reviews. These sites lack personalization of restaurant ratings for individual users, and the sites’ review pools are often small, noisy, and unrepresentative of the true quality of the restaurants they describe. We describe a system that seeks to correct these shortcomings. Mine & Dine is a restaurant recommendation engine that mines web-based social media to make unique recommendations based on other restaurants the user has already visited. The user enters as input a variable number of restaurants he or she has already visited in the area, and then ranks each one on a real number scale from 0 to 5. The system parses through web logs (or “blogs” for short) and tags those that qualify as reviews of local restaurants. From these reviews, item-based collaborative filtering is employed to predict the user’s ratings of other restaurants in the area and rank them. The highest-ranked restaurants are then recommended to the user. To evaluate our recommendations, we calculate the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of a users’ predicted restaurant ratings in test data. Comparing Mine & Dine’s performance to recommendations based on average restaurant ratings (the baseline), we have achieved a significant 10% reduction in MAPE.
Edge-aware image smoothing using commute time distances

Most edge-aware smoothing methods are based on the Euclidean distance to measure the similarity between adjacent pixels. This paper exploits the properties of the commute time to extend the notion of “similarity” in this context. The intuition is that since the commute time reflects the effect of all possible weighted paths between nodes (pixels), it can account for the global distribution of image features. The commute time is characterized by eigenvectors of a large Laplacian matrix, which is very costly even with sophisticated eigen-solver. To this end, we further employ a multiscale algorithm for approximating the eigenvector computation efficiently. It is analogous to the classical Nystrom's method for low rank matrix approximation. However, we do not depend on long-range connections between nodes, allowing one to include spatial coordinates in defining feature space. Extensive experimental validation demonstrates the benefits of using the commute time in a range of image processing applications, such as edge-aware image smoothing, texture filtering, and local edit propagation.
WrtVMM : A Virtual Machine Monitor for Embedded Devices

We built a virtual machine monitor for the Linksys WRT54GL wireless router to run Embedded Xinu as a guest OS within OpenWrt. The system uses a kernel module and signal handlers to support the virtualization of the guest OS. Sufficient support is provided to allow Xinu to startup, handle timer interrupts, provide I/O, and execute processes in the Xinu shell. The virtual machine performance for processor and memory intensive tasks is similar to the execution time when running the two operating systems alone. Network throughput is unaffected by the VMM.
Dynamics Of Land Use Land Cover For Sustainability: A Case Of Shillong, Meghalaya, India

Land use/land cover change in urban area is a complex and dynamic process that involves both natural and human systems. At present, urban area in developing nation is experiencing rapid urbanization and undergoing physical transformation. It is therefore, essential that urban planners and managers understand the past and present land use land cover changes in order to predict its impacts on the society, economy and environment of the cities. This present study aims to explore and assess land use land cover changes in Shillong, India which has experienced significant increase of population during the last three decades mainly due to the growth in service and educational sector. The study monitored land use land cover changes since 1972 in order to assess the development of services activities and its impact on physical transformation. Urban built -up area is an uncontrolled phenomenon with unplanned nature of development. However, urban expansion intensity index in the study area revealed that high speed of land use land cover transformation also occurred sporadically throughout the outskirt of the tribal town also after the state bifurcation in 1972 that perhaps it is a cause of concern to planners.
Dispatching PACKET_INs to the right SDN control application via context interpretation in Mobile Core Networks

Telco operators started to apply the SDN technologies also in the design of Mobile Core Networks (MCNs). In this change towards SDNized Mobile Core Network, it is crucial to understand how conventional interfaces among different mobile network entities should evolve. The issues derived from this change have not been tackled by current research approaches. This paper presents the first initiative to close this research gap. We tackle the key problem of how to identify which mobile SDN applications (APPs) should be invoked once a PACKET_IN (the OpenFlow message that transport information from the data plane to the control plane) is received at the control level. We propose data structures, a model, and detailed examples of three important PACKET_IN context interpretation for MCNs. Initial experiments, based on Floodlight controller and Mininet emulation environment were carried out. The results indicate that it is feasible to use our proposed approach to dispatch PACKET_INs to the right SDN APP. The delay introduced due to invocation of such mechanism to interpret the context of the PACKET_IN and activate the appropriate mobile SDN APPs is only in the order of microseconds. Our proposal can be used to simplify current Mobile Core Network interface design by exploiting the SDN mechanisms. We believe, this work helps to pave the way towards fully SDNized Mobile Core Networks.