Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Broadband internet performance: a view from the gateway

We present the first study of network access link performance measured directly from home gateway devices. Policymakers, ISPs, and users are increasingly interested in studying the performance of Internet access links. Because of many confounding factors in a home network or on end hosts, however, thoroughly understanding access network performance requires deploying measurement infrastructure in users' homes as gateway devices. In conjunction with the Federal Communication Commission's study of broadband Internet access in the United States, we study the throughput and latency of network access links using longitudinal measurements from nearly 4,000 gateway devices across 8 ISPs from a deployment of over 4,200 devices. We study the performance users achieve and how various factors ranging from the user's choice of modem to the ISP's traffic shaping policies can affect performance. Our study yields many important findings about the characteristics of existing access networks. Our findings also provide insights into the ways that access network performance should be measured and presented to users, which can help inform ongoing broader efforts to benchmark the performance of access networks.
Homozygous NOTCH3 null mutation and impaired NOTCH3 signaling in recessive early-onset arteriopathy and cavitating leukoencephalopathy

Notch signaling is essential for vascular physiology. Neomorphic heterozygous mutations in NOTCH3, one of the four human NOTCH receptors, cause cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL). Hypomorphic heterozygous alleles have been occasionally described in association with a spectrum of cerebrovascular phenotypes overlapping CADASIL, but their pathogenic potential is unclear. We describe a patient with childhood‐onset arteriopathy, cavitating leukoencephalopathy with cerebral white matter abnormalities presented as diffuse cavitations, multiple lacunar infarctions and disseminated microbleeds. We identified a novel homozygous c.C2898A (p.C966*) null mutation in NOTCH3 abolishing NOTCH3 expression and causing NOTCH3 signaling impairment. NOTCH3 targets acting in the regulation of arterial tone (KCNA5) or expressed in the vasculature (CDH6) were downregulated. Patient's vessels were characterized by smooth muscle degeneration as in CADASIL, but without deposition of granular osmiophilic material (GOM), the CADASIL hallmark. The heterozygous parents displayed similar but less dramatic trends in decrease in the expression of NOTCH3 and its targets, as well as in vessel degeneration. This study suggests a functional link between NOTCH3 deficiency and pathogenesis of vascular leukoencephalopathies.
SRA: Description of the Solomon System as Used for MUC-5

SRA used a language-independent, domain-independent, multipurpose text understanding system as the core of the MUC-5 system for extraction from English and Japanese joint venture texts . SRA's NLP core system , SOLOMON, has been under development since 1986 . It has been used for a variety of domains, and wa s aimed from the start to be language-independent, domain-independent, and application-independent . More recently, SOLOMON has been extended to be multilingual, beginning with Spanish in 1990 and Japanese i n 1991 . The Spanish-Japanese text understanding system that uses SOLOMON was developed for a dornai n very different from the MUC-5 joint venture domain (cf . Aone, et al . [2]) .
Spermatozoa scattering by a microchannel feature: an elastohydrodynamic model

Sperm traverse their microenvironment through viscous fluid by propagating flagellar waves; the waveform emerges as a consequence of elastic structure, internal active moments and low Reynolds number fluid dynamics. Engineered microchannels have recently been proposed as a method of sorting and manipulating motile cells; the interaction of cells with these artificial environments therefore warrants investigation. A numerical method is presented for large-amplitude elastohydrodynamic interaction of active swimmers with domain features. This method is employed to examine hydrodynamic scattering by a model microchannel backstep feature. Scattering is shown to depend on backstep height and the relative strength of viscous and elastic forces in the flagellum. In a ‘high viscosity’ parameter regime corresponding to human sperm in cervical mucus analogue, this hydrodynamic contribution to scattering is comparable in magnitude to recent data on contact effects, being of the order of 5°–10°. Scattering can be positive or negative depending on the relative strength of viscous and elastic effects, emphasizing the importance of viscosity on the interaction of sperm with their microenvironment. The modulation of scattering angle by viscosity is associated with variations in flagellar asymmetry induced by the elastohydrodynamic interaction with the boundary feature.
Experience distributing objects in an SMMP OS

Designing and implementing system software so that it scales well on shared-memory multiprocessors (SMMPs) has proven to be surprisingly challenging. To improve scalability, most designers to date have focused on concurrency by iteratively eliminating the need for locks and reducing lock contention. However, our experience indicates that locality is just as, if not more, important and that focusing on locality ultimately leads to a more scalable system. In this paper, we describe a methodology and a framework for constructing system software structured for locality, exploiting techniques similar to those used in distributed systems. Specifically, we found two techniques to be effective in improving scalability of SMMP operating systems: (i) an object-oriented structure that minimizes sharing by providing a natural mapping from independent requests to independent code paths and data structures, and (ii) the selective partitioning, distribution, and replication of object implementations in order to improve locality. We describe concrete examples of distributed objects and our experience implementing them. We demonstrate that the distributed implementations improve the scalability of operating-system-intensive parallel workloads.
On the use of multicriteria decision analysis to formally integrate community values into ecosystem‐based freshwater management

Freshwater ecosystems are essential to peoples' economic, cultural, and social well‐being, yet are still among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. Consequently, a plethora of recent regulations and policies seek to halt the loss of restore or safeguard freshwaters, their biodiversity, and the ecosystem services they provide. Ecosystem‐based management (EBM), an approach that considers human society as an integral part of ecosystems, is increasingly being promoted to help meet this challenge. EBM involves an overarching regulatory framework and local solutions with trade‐offs and compromises—factors that not only make decision processes complex but also provide the means for combining top–down regulation with bottom‐up priorities into collaborative management strategies. Although stakeholder participation is encouraged in most modern freshwater management, community values are often largely neglected. Here, we introduce a well‐known participatory decision support framework based on multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to operationalize EBM and promote community‐inclusive decision making in freshwater management. We explain the different steps that this approach comprises, which lead to the prioritization of a management strategy in a collaborative way. We also show how cultural values that inherently embed strong links between the environment and people can be used together with typical ecological and socio‐economic values. We illustrate the MCDA‐based EBM‐approach for New Zealand, one of the few countries in which regional freshwater management is mandated to uphold environmental quality standards, while safeguarding local community values and ecosystem services. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges, which are increasingly emerging as a result of mandated community collaboration in environmental management.
Estimating Software Development Effort using Tabu Search

Some studies have been recently carried out to investigate the use of search-based techniques in estimating software development effort and the results reported seem to be promising. Tabu Search is a meta-heuristic approach successfully used to address several optimization problems. In this paper, we report on an empirical analysis carried out exploiting Tabu Search on two publicly available datasets, i.e., Desharnais and NASA. On these datasets, the exploited Tabu Search settings provided estimates comparable with those achieved with some widely used estimation techniques, thus suggesting for further investigations on this topic.
Science and world animal production

Editorial note The first Hammond Memorial Lecture was given in London in March 1969 by Dr C. P. McMeekan, CBE, formerly Director of the Ruakura Research Centre in New Zealand, afterwards on the staff of, and currently consultant to, the World Bank. Apart from its special interest to those engaged in animal science, the lecture contained much of general interest to natural and social scientists and we are grateful to Dr McMeekan, the Hammond Memorial Trustees and the British Society for Animal Production, under whose auspices the lecture was delivered, for permission to print a substantial portion of it in the Journal of Biosocial Science. Some of the selected material is provocative. For instance, it would be interesting to know the basis of the assumption that world population having risen to 6000 million by the end of this century, will then stabilize. Again, many will disagree with the estimates of unused usable land. But all of the material stimulates thought and we are glad to have the opportunity of publishing it. After discussing the outstanding achievements of Sir John Hammond and the progress of animal science generally, Dr McMeekan continued:
Structure of the Type IVa Major Pilin from the Electrically Conductive Bacterial Nanowires of Geobacter sulfurreducens*

Background: PilA is the major type IVa pilin that forms the conductive nanowires of Geobacter sulfurreducens. Results: We report the atomic resolution structure of PilA determined with solution state NMR spectroscopy. Conclusion: The Geobacter sulfurreducens PilA adopts a long, kinked α-helix with a dynamic C-terminal region. Significance: The structure provides a foundation to build a model of the bacterial nanowire. Several species of δ proteobacteria are capable of reducing insoluble metal oxides as well as other extracellular electron acceptors. These bacteria play a critical role in the cycling of minerals in subsurface environments, sediments, and groundwater. In some species of bacteria such as Geobacter sulfurreducens, the transport of electrons is proposed to be facilitated by filamentous fibers that are referred to as bacterial nanowires. These nanowires are polymeric assemblies of proteins belonging to the type IVa family of pilin proteins and are mainly comprised of one subunit protein, PilA. Here, we report the high resolution solution NMR structure of the PilA protein from G. sulfurreducens determined in detergent micelles. The protein is >85% α-helical and exhibits similar architecture to the N-terminal regions of other non-conductive type IVa pilins. The detergent micelle interacts with the first 21 amino acids of the protein, indicating that this region likely associates with the bacterial inner membrane prior to fiber formation. A model of the G. sulfurreducens pilus fiber is proposed based on docking of this structure into the fiber model of the type IVa pilin from Neisseria gonorrhoeae. This model provides insight into the organization of aromatic amino acids that are important for electrical conduction.
Rumor restriction in Online Social Networks

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have recently emerged as an effective medium for information sharing. Unfortunately, it has been frequently observed that malicious rumors being spread over an OSN are not controllable, and this is not desirable. This paper proposes a new problem, namely the γ - k rumor restriction problem, whose goal is, given a social network, to find a set S of nodes with k protectors (γ * k protectors from the contaminated set, and (1 - γ) * k protectors from the decontaminated set) to protect the network such that the number of decontaminated nodes is maximum. We show that the objective function of the γ - k rumor restriction problem is submodular, and use this result to design a greedy approximation algorithm with performance ratio of 1 - 1/e for the problem under the linear threshold model and independent cascade model, respectively. To verify our algorithms, we conduct experiments on real word social networks including NetHEPT, WikiVote and Slashdot0811. The results show that our algorithm works efficiently and effectively.
Complete spinal cord transection treated by implantation of a reinforced synthetic hydrogel channel results in syringomyelia and caudal migration of the rostral stump.

OBJECTIVE Previously, we reported that synthetic poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate-co-methyl methacrylate) (PHEMA-MMA) channels promoted regeneration of a small number of axons from brainstem motor nuclei yet provided limited functional recovery after complete spinal cord transection at T8 in rats. However, we found that these modulus channels partially collapsed over time. Therefore, we synthesized coil-reinforced PHEMA or PHEMA-MMA channels with greater elastic moduli and introduced a new spinal fixation technique to prevent collapse. We also assessed axonal regeneration within the new channels containing a cocktail of autologous peripheral nerve grafts, fibrin matrix, and acidic fibroblast growth factor. METHODS After spinal cord transection, rats were divided into six groups: Groups 1 and 2 had either a PHEMA or PHEMA-MMA reinforced channel implanted between the stumps of the transected spinal cord with the cocktail; Groups 3 and 4 had either an unfilled reinforced PHEMA or PHEMA-MMA channel similarly implanted; Group 5 had an spinal cord transection without channel implanted, and Group 6 underwent the identical procedure to Group 1, but rats were sacrificed by 8 weeks for early histological assessment. Groups 1 to 5 were sacrificed at 18 weeks. RESULTS There was no channel collapse at any time. However, there was no improvement in axonal regeneration or functional recovery among Groups 1 to 4 because of the unexpected development of syringomyelia and caudal migration of the rostral stump. Functional recovery was better in Groups 1 to 4 compared with Group 5 (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION The use of channels to enhance regeneration of axons is promising; however, improvement of the design of the channels is required.
Long-range persistence in sea surface temperature off the coast of central California

We estimate long-range persistence in ocean surface temperature off the coast of central California, a region where similar observations have not been made. The database consists of 20-year records of daily sea surface temperature from three locations: Pacific Grove and Granite Canyon along the coast, and Southeast Farallon Island located 40 km off the coast and slightly further north. Long-range persistence is important for a number of reasons: on the negative side, it can have serious detrimental effects for statistical inference and on the positive side, it provides access to the ocean’s memory which can lead to a greater understanding of the processes involved and thus to better prediction. Long-range persistence also provides important insights into the relationship between the scaling that is obtained and the time scales employed. The first step in the analysis was to remove the annual cycle from the data at each location because of its detrimental effect on estimating long-range persistence. Then detrended fluctuation analysis was used to calculate long-range persistence where a single scaling exponent is obtained that relates the magnitudes of the fluctuations in the data to the time scales involved. Similar scaling exponents were obtained for Granite Canyon and Pacific Grove with values of 1.04 and 1.05, respectively. At Southeast Farallon Island, a value of 1.16 was obtained. The increase in the scaling exponent at Southeast Farallon Island is consistent with observations made elsewhere and model results, which indicate that as coastal influence decreases further offshore, the scaling exponents for sea surface temperature tend to increase. Because Southeast Farallon Island is exposed to subarctic waters offshore, whereas Pacific Grove and Granite Canyon are exposed to warmer waters from the California Undercurrent along the coast, these exposures to different water masses may contribute to the observed change in scaling behavior.
Pedestrian Static Trajectory Analysis of a Hypermarket

In this paper, we propose a combination of pedestrian data collection and analysis and modeling that may yield higher competitive advantage in the business environment. The data collection is only based on simple inventory and questionnaire surveys on a hypermarket to obtain trajectory path of pedestrian movement. Though the data has limitation by using static trajectories, our techniques showed that it is possible to obtain aggregation of flow pattern and alley attractiveness similar to the result of aggregation using dynamic trajectory. A case study of a real hypermarket demonstrates that daily necessity products are closely related to higher flow pattern. Using the proposed method, we are also able to quantify pedestrian behavior that shoppers tend to walk about 7 times higher than the ideal shortest path
A postsynaptic Mr 58,000 (58K) protein concentrated at acetylcholine receptor-rich sites in Torpedo electroplaques and skeletal muscle

In the study of proteins that may participate in the events responsible for organization of macromolecules in the postsynaptic membrane, we have used a mAb to an Mr 58,000 protein (58K protein) found in purified acetylcholine receptor (AChR)-enriched membranes from Torpedo electrocytes. Immunogold labeling with the mAb shows that the 58K protein is located on the cytoplasmic side of Torpedo postsynaptic membranes and is most concentrated near the crests of the postjunctional folds, i.e., at sites of high AChR concentration. The mAb also recognizes a skeletal muscle protein with biochemical characteristics very similar to the electrocyte 58K protein. In immunofluorescence experiments on adult mammalian skeletal muscle, the 58K protein mAb labels endplates very intensely, but staining of extrasynaptic membrane is also seen. Endplate staining is not due entirely to membrane infoldings since a similar pattern is seen in neonatal rat diaphragm in which postjunctional folds are shallow and rudimentary, and in chicken muscle, which lacks folds entirely. Furthermore, clusters of AChR that occur spontaneously on cultured Xenopus myotomal cells and mouse muscle cells of the C2 line are also stained more intensely than the surrounding membrane with the 58K mAb. Denervation of adult rat diaphragm muscle for relatively long times causes a dramatic decrease in the endplate staining intensity. Thus, the concentration of this evolutionarily conserved protein at postsynaptic sites may be regulated by innervation or by muscle activity.
Association of grassland birds with Saccharum-Imperata patch in a northeastern tea estate of Bangladesh

Saccharum-Imperata grasslands in Bangladesh were once directly associated with 10 native extirpated birds and still harbor many diminutives. These habitats are now pocketed only in northeastern regions of the country due to intensive conversion, overstocked grazing and fire suppression. After a hiatus of about four decades, composition and interaction of grassland specialist birds within a managed habitat of a tea estate was studied between November 2015 and May 2016 at micro-habitat scale using line transects, diversity indices, Bray-Curtis cluster analysis and linear mixed models. Including 819 individuals of 39 grassland specialists, a total of 2,586 individuals of 110 species were recorded. The analyses indicated the landscape to have a significant effect on species richness. Of six micro-habitats, the area along the creek and dense tall grasses are important habitats for grassland specialists. The latter ranked top in Shannon’s index (H′) for specialists (33 species, H′ = 2.988) followed by micro-habitats along the creek (18, 2.592) and sparse short grass (16, 2.401), comparing marked difference with micro-habitats of sparse grass along the road (21, H′=2.279), bush associated (11, 2.206) and crop associated areas (11, 2.124). The effect of slash-and-burn was stark on specialists, no significant association was found with grazing. This has been surmised as relationship among specialists’ ecology, long-term treatment effect and unpalatable nature of Saccharum ravennae as fodder. Based on the hypothesis, the study emphasizes exigencies of a potential management strategy for avian habitats within tea estates of Bangladesh.
Dose-response: an International Journal Linear Non-threshold: Separating Facts from Fiction Recommended Citation Linear Non-threshold: Separating Facts from Fiction

ᮀ The Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) process is used by virtually all governmental agencies to compute incidence of cancer as a consequence of exposure to a carcinogen. This comment applies the concept of Best Available Science (BAS) Metrics for Evaluation of Scientific Claims (MESC) derived from BAS to issues related to reliability of LNT hypothesis. This paper identifies the level of maturity of the LNT hypothesis and the associated uncertainties.
Revealing Influenced Selected Feature for P2P Botnet Detection

P2P botnet has become a serious security threat for computer networking systems. Botnet attack causes a great financial loss and badly impact the information and communication technology (ICT) system. Current botnet detection mechanisms have limitations and flaws to deal with P2P botnets which famously known for their complexity and scalable attack. Studies show that botnets behavior can be detected based on several detection features. However, some of the feature parameters may not represent botnet behavior and may lead to higher false alarm detection rate. In this paper, we reveal selected feature that influences P2P botnets detection. The result obtained by selecting features shows detection attack rate of 99.74%.