Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TDDFS: A Tier-aware Data Deduplication-based File System

With the rapid increase in the amount of data produced and the development of new types of storage devices, storage tiering continues to be a popular way to achieve a good tradeoff between performance and cost-effectiveness. In a basic two-tier storage system, a storage tier with higher performance and typically higher cost (the fast tier) is used to store frequently-accessed (active) data while a large amount of less-active data is stored in the lower-performance and low-cost tier (the slow tier). Data is migrated between these two tiers according to its activity. In this paper, we propose a Tier-aware Data Deduplication-based File System, called TDDFS, which can operate efficiently on top of a two-tier storage environment. Specifically, to achieve better performance, nearly all file operations are performed in the fast tier. To achieve higher cost-effectiveness, files are migrated from the fast tier to the slow tier if they are no longer active, and this migration is done with data deduplication. The distinctiveness of our design is that it maintains the non-redundant (unique) chunks produced by data deduplication in both tiers if possible. When a file is reloaded (called a reloaded file) from the slow tier to the fast tier, if some data chunks of the file already exist in the fast tier, the data migration of these chunks from the slow tier can be avoided. Our evaluation shows that TDDFS achieves close to the best overall performance among various file-tiering designs for two-tier storage systems.
Aneurisma inflamatório da aorta abdominal: revisão

The presence of abdominal or back pain, weight loss and elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate is characteristic of the inflammatory abdominal aortic aneurysms. Low-grade fever is sometimes identified. Other inflammatory markers, such as white blood cell count, C reactive protein, anti-nuclear antibody and IgG4 levels can be elevated. Computed tomography is the exam of choice, showing characteristically the mantle sign. Steroids improve the symptomatology and reduce inflammation, but do not treat the aneurysm. The choice of interventions: open surgical repair or endovascular aneurysm repair can be considered according to the available expertise, patient risk factors, anatomic aneurysm criteria and presence of hydronephrosis.
IT Governance and IT Investment Performance : An Empirical Analysis 1

This study analyzes the influence of IT governance on IT investment performance. IT investment performance is known to vary widely across firms. Prior studies find that the variations are often due to the lack of investments in complementary organizational capitals. The presence of complementarities between IT and organizational capitals suggests that IT investment decisions should be made at the right organizational level to ensure that both IT and organizational factors are taken into consideration. IT governance, which determines the allocation of IT decision rights within a firm, therefore, plays an important role in IT investment performance. This study tests this proposition by using a sample dataset from Fortune 1000 firms. A key challenge in this study is that the appropriate IT governance mode varies across firms as well as across business units within a firm. We address this challenge by developing an empirical model of IT governance that is based on earlier studies on multiple contingency factors of IT governance. We use the empirical model to predict the appropriate IT governance mode for each business unit within a firm and use the difference between the predicted and observed IT governance mode to derive a measure of a firm’s IT governance misalignment. We find that firms with high IT governance misalignment receive no benefits from their IT investments; whereas firms with low IT governance misalignment obtain two to three times the value from their IT investments compared to firms with average IT governance misalignment. Our results highlight the importance of IT governance in realizing value from IT investments and confirm the validity of using the multiple contingency factor model in assessing IT governance decisions.
Multiresolution Approach to Subpixel Registration by Linear Approximation of PSF

Linear approximation of point spread function (PSF) is a new method for determining subpixel translations between images. The problem with the actual algorithm is the inability of determining translations larger than 1 pixel. In this paper a multiresolution technique is proposed to deal with the problem. Its performance is evaluated by comparison with two other well known registration method. In the proposed technique the images are downsampled in order to have a wider view. Progressively decreasing the downsampling rate up to the initial resolution and using linear approximation technique at each step, the algorithm is able to determine translations of several pixels in subpixel levels. Keywords—Point Spread Function, Subpixel translation, Superresolution, Multiresolution approach.
Self-Healing Approach in the FastFix Project.

The EU FP7 FastFIX project tackles issues related to remote software maintenance. In order to achieve this, the project considers approaches relying on context elicitation, event correlation, fault-replication and self-healing. Self-healing helps systems return to a normal state after the occurrence of a fault or vulnerability exploitation has been detected. The problem is intuitively appealing as a way to automate the different maintenance type processes (corrective, adaptive and perfective) and forms an interesting area of research that has inspired many research initiatives. In this paper, we propose a framework for automating corrective maintenance and present its early stage development, based on software control principles. Our approach automates the engineering of self-healing systems as it does not require the system to be designed in a specific way. Instead it can be applied to legacy systems and automatically equips them with observation and control points. Moreover, the proposed approach relies on a sound control theory developed for Discrete Event Systems. Finally, this paper contributes to the field by introducing challenges for effective application of this approach to relevant industrial systems.
Distance-based Reordering in English to Hindi Statistical Machine Translation

paper compares different reordering models on English to Hindi statistical machine translation system. The two Indo- European languages differ significantly in their word order preferences. While English follows SVO model, Hindi follows SOV model. Therefore both long distance and short distance reordering becomes important. The reordering models available in MOSES SMT are discussed and compared with a more novel approach called distance-based reordering. This new approach significantly improves the quality of English to Hindi translation, both in terms of BLEU score and subjective human evaluation.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Semantic diversity

Semantic ambiguity is typically measured by summing the number of senses or dictionary definitions a word has. Such measures are somewhat subjective and may not adequately capture the full extent of variation in word meaning, particularly for polysemous words that can be used in many different ways with subtle shifts in meaning. Here, we describe an alternative, computationally-derived measure of ambiguity based on the proposal that the meanings of words vary continuously as a function of their context. On this view, words that appear in a wide range of contexts on diverse topics are more variable in meaning than those that appear in a restricted set of similar contexts. To quantify this variation, we performed latent semantic analysis on a large text corpus to estimate the semantic similarity of different linguistic contexts. From these estimates, we calculated the degree to which the different contexts associated with a given word vary in their meanings. We term this quantity a word’s semantic diversity (SemD). We suggest that this approach provides an objective way of quantifying the subtle, context-dependent variation in word meaning that is often present in language. We demonstrate that SemD is correlated with other measures of ambiguity and contextual variability, as well as with frequency and imageability. We also show that SemD is a strong predictor of performance in semantic judgements in healthy individuals and patients with semantic deficits, and accounts for unique variance beyond that of other predictors. SemD values for over 30,000 English words are provided as supplementary materials.
An improved method for single flow direction calculation in grid digital elevation models

This paper presents improvements to the global D8 (GD8) method for calculating single flow directions in a grid digital elevation model. Flow directions computed from grid digital elevation models serve as the foundation for much of the analysis and modeling of hydrological processes that are driven by topographic gradients. The literature includes both single flow direction methods, where flow goes to only one downslope cell, and multiple flow direction methods that apportion flow among multiple downslope cells. Among single flow direction methods, the standard D8 method, in which the flow direction is set based on the steepest local slope, results in bias on surfaces that do not align with the grid directions. Efforts to address this problem have led to the development of extended methods that account for elevation values further upslope in determining flow directions. We have identified discrepancies in one such method, GD8, and have examined ways to resolve these discrepancies. An improvement to GD8, named iGD8, is presented that allows replacing a reference cell from which path deviations are accumulated and that considers horizontal path deviation rather than global slope as a flow direction criterion. The improved method is found to be effective in resolving the problems encountered with GD8 and to be more efficient than a previously proposed alternative method (least transversal deviation (LTD) based D8, namely D8‐LTD) that uses recursive searching for the largest upstream area when multiple flow paths converge. The proposed improved GD8 method offers the opportunity for improved analysis and modeling of topographically driven hydrological processes by providing better foundational flow directions for these analyses.
LATE QUATERNARY GLACIAL FLUCTUATIONS IN THE LANGTANG VALLEY, NEPAL HIMALAYA, RECONSTRUCTED BY RELATIVE DATING METHODS

Glacial fluctuations in the Langtang Himal are discussed on the basis of multiple relative dating (RD) methods in addition to the '4C method. The RD methods used for the classification of the moraine deposits include the Schmidt hammer rebound values, weathering rind thickness, percentage of clasts with oxidation stain, height of mineral projection, pit depth, percentage of weathered clasts, soil development, and soil color index. By using the RD data, we were able to divide the moraines into five stages (Gora Tabela, Langtang, Lirung, and Yala I and II); an older stage (Lama) is recognized only by the glacialtrough configuration extending down to an altitude of approximately 2600 m. The Gora Tabela Stage is defined by the deeply weathered Lower Till extending down to 3200 m a.s. l. The Langtang Stage (3650-3000 14C yr BP) probably corresponds to the greatest advance in the Holocene, followed by a series of smaller advances in the Lirung Stage (2800-550 '4C yr BP), and the two smaller Little Ice Age advances (Yala I and II Stages).
ES-ENAS: Blackbox Optimization over Hybrid Spaces via Combinatorial and Continuous Evolution

In this paper, we approach the problem of optimizing blackbox functions over large hybrid search spaces consisting of both combinatorial and continuous parameters. We demonstrate that previous evolutionary algorithms which rely on mutation-based approaches, while exible over combinatorial spaces, suer from a curse of dimensionality in high dimensional continuous spaces both theoretically and empirically, which thus limits their scope over hybrid search spaces as well. In order to combat this curse, we propose ES-ENAS, a simple and modular joint optimization procedure combining the class of sample-ecient smoothed gradient gradient techniques, commonly known as Evolutionary Strategies (ES), with combinatorial optimizers in a highly scalable and intuitive way, inspired by the one-shot or supernet paradigm introduced in Ecient Neural Architecture Search (ENAS). By doing so, we achieve signicantly more sample eciency, which we empirically demonstrate over synthetic benchmarks, and are further able to apply ES-ENAS for architecture search over popular RL benchmarks.
Financing Decisions When Managers are Risk Averse

This paper studies the impact of financing decisions on risk-averse managers. Leverage raises stock volatility, driving a wedge between the cost of debt to shareholders and the cost to undiversified, risk-averse managers. I quantify these "volatility costs" of debt and examine their impact on financing decisions. The paper finds: (1) the volatility costs of debt can be large, particularly if the CEO owns in-the-money options; (2) higher option ownership tends to increase, not decrease, the volatility costs of debt; (3) a stock price increase typically reduces managerial preference for leverage, consistent with prior evidence on security issues. Empirically, I estimate the volatility costs of debt for a large sample of U.S. firms and test whether these costs affect financing decisions. I find evidence that volatility costs affect both the level of and short-term changes in debt. Further, a probit model of security issues suggests that managerial preferences help explain a firm's choice between debt and equity
A novel statistical generative model dedicated to face recognitionGuillaume

In this paper, a novel statistical generative model to describe a face is presented, and is applied to the face authentication task. Classical generative models used so far in face recognition, such as Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for instance, are making strong assumptions on the observations derived from a face image. Indeed, such models usually assume that local observations are independent, which is obviously not the case in a face. The presented model hence proposes to encode relationships between salient facial features by using a static Bayesian Network. Since robustness against imprecisely located faces is of great concern in a real-world scenario, authentication results are presented using automatically localised faces. Experiments conducted on the XM2VTS and the BANCA databases showed that the proposed approach is suitable for this task, since it reaches state-of-the-art results. We compare our model to baseline appearance-based systems (Eigenfaces and Fisherfaces) but also to classical generative models, namely GMM, HMM and pseudo-2DHMM. 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.
The more you learn, the less you store: memory\--controlled incremental SVM

This paper presents a novel SVM-based algorithm for visual object recognition, capable of learning model representations incrementally. We combine an incremental extension of SVMs with a method which reduces the number of support vectors needed to build the decision function without any loss in performance. The resulting algorithm is guaranteed to achieve the same recognition performance as the original incremental method while reducing the memory requirements. We benchmarked the novel technique against the batch method and the original version of incremental SVM. Experiments were performed in two domains, material categorization and indoor place recognition. In both applications, results show that the two incremental methods preserve the performance of the batch algorithm, but only our new technique consistently achieves a statistically significant reduction of the memory requirements. We then propose an extension to the part of the algorithm controlling the number of support vectors to be stored. We introduce a parameter which permits a user-set trade-off between performance and memory reduction. This property is potentially useful in applications like indoor place recognition for multi-sensory topological mapping, where the memory size of the visual models must be kept under control.
JAK1–STAT1–STAT3, a key pathway promoting proliferation and preventing premature differentiation of myoblasts

MSCs. In contrast, MyoD is not expressed in quiescent MSCs. In response to muscle injury or exercise, these quiescent MSCs become activated, as indicated by the expression of MyoD, reenter the cell cycle, and actively proliferate to form myoblasts. Eventually, these proliferating myoblasts irreversibly withdraw from cell cycles, differentiate, and fuse with existing myofi bers. Accumulating evidence indicates that myoblasts are the primary cell types responsible for muscle regeneration in vivo (Dhawan and Rando, 2005; Holterman and Rudnicki, 2005; Wagers and Conboy, 2005).
Electrical discharges in the overshooting tops of thunderstorms

Previous studies have found that the vertical distribution of sources of very high frequency (VHF) signals from discharges mapped by Lightning Mapping Arrays typically have a secondary maximum in a storm's overshooting top. Low rates of these sources tend to occur continually throughout the lifetime of the overshooting top (OT), rather than sources occurring in the episodic distinct flashes observed at lower altitudes. This study examines the evolution of the VHF OT signature (VHF OT, defined here as a sustained period of ≥4 VHF sources per minute per 200 m layer above a storm's level of neutral buoyancy (LNB)) relative to the evolution of radar reflectivity and IR imagery of overshooting tops in three supercell and two multicell storms. The VHF OT began before OTs were detected in IR satellite imagery of the supercell storms. No OT was observed in IR imagery for either multicell storm, but this lack may have been due to the spatial and temporal resolution of the current IR imager. The VHF OT began near the time the 18 or 30 dBZ echo top rose above the LNB and ended near the time it fell below the LNB. There were too few radar volume scans of OTs in the multicell storms for a correlation analysis. In the supercell storms, however, the maximum altitude of VHF sources typically was less than or equal to the altitude of 18 dBZ echo tops and was correlated with these echo tops (linear correlation coefficient ≥0.86) during the period of the VHF OT.
Effects of Schmidt number on the short-wavelength instabilities in stratified vortices

We present a local stability analysis to investigate the effects of differential diffusion between momentum and density (quantified by the Schmidt number $Sc$ ) on the three-dimensional, short-wavelength instabilities in planar vortices with a uniform stable stratification along the vorticity axis. Assuming small diffusion in both momentum and density, but arbitrary values for $Sc$ , we present a detailed analytical/numerical analysis for three different classes of base flows: (i) an axisymmetric vortex, (ii) an elliptical vortex and (iii) the flow in the neighbourhood of a hyperbolic stagnation point. While a centrifugally stable axisymmetric vortex remains stable for any $Sc$ , it is shown that $Sc$ can have significant effects in a centrifugally unstable axisymmetric vortex: the range of unstable perturbations increases when $Sc$ is taken away from unity, with the extent of increase being larger for $Sc\ll 1$ than for $Sc\gg 1$ . Additionally, for $Sc>1$ , we report the possibility of oscillatory instability. In an elliptical vortex with a stable stratification, $Sc\neq 1$ is shown to non-trivially influence the three different inviscid instabilities (subharmonic, fundamental and superharmonic) that have been previously reported, and also introduce a new branch of oscillatory instability that is not present at $Sc=1$ . The unstable parameter space for the subharmonic (instability IA) and fundamental (instability IB) inviscid instabilities are shown to be significantly increased for $Sc<1$ and $Sc>1$ , respectively. Importantly, for sufficiently small and large $Sc$ , respectively, the maximum growth rate for instabilities IA and IB occurs away from the inviscid limit. The new oscillatory instability (instability III) is shown to occur only for sufficiently small $Sc<1$ , the signature of which is nevertheless present with zero growth rate in the inviscid limit. The Schmidt number is then shown to play no role in the evolution of transverse perturbations on the flow around a hyperbolic stagnation point with a stable stratification. We conclude by discussing the physical length scales associated with the $Sc\neq 1$ instabilities, and their potential relevance in various realistic settings.
Passion & IT Governance

An exploratory study has been conducted of two case studies to try to understand how senior management influences IS projec t success. The cases were analysed using frameworks proposed by McGolphin and Ward (1997), Alter (1999), Cooke-Davis (2002) and Akkermans and van Helden (2002) and also comparing with other case studies in the IS literature. A significant component of the analysis relate to IT governance issues. It appears that senior managers effectively influence success by committing time to be made aware of issues and actively participating to resolve conflicts effectively. The cases suggest that the Board should take the role of monitoring to ensure that the benefits promised are actually delivered and they have the responsibility to terminate failing projects. It is proposed that the “passion” of key stakeholders for a project is the key indicator of success.
ZU Scholars ZU Scholars

Behavioural Evidence Analysis (BEA) is, in theory, useful in developing an understanding of the offender, the victim, the crime scene, and the dynamics of the crime. It can add meaning to the evidence obtained through digital forensic techniques and assist investigators with reconstruction of a crime. There is, however, little empirical research examining the application of BEA to actual criminal cases, particularly cyberstalking cases. This study addresses this gap by examining the utility of BEA for such cases in terms of understanding the behavioural and motivational dimensions of offending, and the way in which digital evidence can be interpreted. It reports on the forensic analysis of 20 cyberstalking cases investigated by Dubai Police in the last ﬁ ve years. Results showed that BEA helps to focus an investigation, enables better understanding and interpretation of victim and offender behaviour, and assists in inferring traits of the offender from available digital evidence. These bene ﬁ ts can help investigators to build a stronger case, reduce time wasted to mistakes, and to exclude suspects wrongly accused in cyberstalking cases. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of DFRWS. This is an open access articleundertheCCBY-NC-NDlicense(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Testicular Germ Cell Tumor Showing Concurrent PNET and Neuroglial Neoplasms With Wide Spectrum of Grades.

Ondrej Ondič, PhD*† Jiří Bouda, PhD‡ Kristýna Němejcová, PhD§ Karol Kajo, PhD∥ Lídia Hegedüs, MD¶ Reza Alaghehbandan, MD, MSc(Epi)# Departments of *Pathology ‡Gynecology and Obstetrics, Medical Faculty Pilsen, Charles University and Charles University Hospital Pilsen †Bioptická laboratoř, s.r. o. , Pilsen §Department of Pathology, The First Medical Faculty Charles University and Charles University Hospital Prague Prague, Czech Republic ∥Department of Pathology, Slovak Medical University in Bratislava Bratislava, Slovak Republic ¶Department of Pathology, Medical Faculty, University of Debrecen Debrecen, Hungary #Department of Pathology, University of British Columbia, Royal Columbian Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada