Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determining optimal processor speeds for periodic real-time tasks with different power characteristics

In this paper, we provide an efficient solution for periodic real-time tasks with (potentially) different power consumption characteristics. We show that a task T/sub i/ can run at a constant speed S/sub i/ at every instance without hurting optimality. We sketch an O(n/sup 2/ log n) algorithm to compute the optimal S/sub i/ values. We also prove that the EDF (Earliest Deadline First) scheduling policy can be used to obtain a feasible schedule with these optimal speed values.
Noises removal from image sequences acquired with moving camera by estimating camera motion from spatio-temporal information

This paper describes a method for removing adherent noises from image sequences. In outdoor environments, it is often the case that scenes taken by a camera are deteriorated because of adherent noises such as waterdrops on the surface of the lens-protecting glass of the camera. To solve this problem, our method takes advantage of image sequences captured with a moving camera whose motion is unknown. Our method estimates a camera motion only from image sequences, and makes a spatio-temporal image to extract the regions of adherent noises by examining differences of track slopes in cross section images between adherent noises and other objects. Finally, regions of noises are eliminated by replacing with image data corresponding to object regions. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our method.
Orally administered anti-cancer nanocarriers loaded with therapeutic proteins

Anti-cancerous ability of orally fed therapeutic proteins was potentiated by further strengthening their digestive resistance by means of nano encapsulation. In this regard, formulation of a novel polymer encapsulated ceramic anti-cancer nanocarriers (ACSC NCs) loaded with anti-cancer proteins (Fe-bLf and SurR9-C84A) were synthesized. These NCs were successfully evaluated for their anti-cancer efficacy in vitro and in nude mice bearing human cancers.
Resilient dynamic task scheduling for unreliable heterogeneous MPSoCs

This paper introduces a failure aware dynamic task scheduling approach for unreliable heterogeneous MPSoCs. Global and local errors are sporadically injected in the system. Two dynamic task scheduling modes are newly introduced to compensate these errors, one for each error injection method. Error free processing elements are favored, faulty ones are isolated. In case of an error the erroneous task is detected and dynamically compensated to guarantee an error free execution. Different applications are used to prove the feasibility of this approach. The failure aware dynamic task scheduling approach assures an error free execution of all applications.
Thomas Malsch, Christoph Schlieder, Peter Kiefer, Maren Lübcke, Rasco Perschke, Marco Schmitt and Klaus Stein: Communication Between Process and Structure

Focusing on observable message signs and referencing structures, communication processes can be described and analysed as message reference networks which are characterized by dynamic pattern evolution. Computational simulation provides a way of obtaining insights into the factors driving such processes. Our paper describes a theoretical framework for communication-oriented modelling — the COM approach — that is centred around the notion of social visibility as a reputation mechanism. The approach contrasts with agent-based social networks on the one hand, and with bibliometric document networks on the other. In introducing our simulation environment COM/TE, typical properties of message reference networks are discussed in terms of a case study which deals with the impact of different media and styles of communication on emergent patterns of social visibility.
The Manufacturing Knowledge Repository - Consolidating Knowledge to Enable Holistic Process Knowledge Management in Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry is faced with strong competition making the companiesâ knowledge resources and their systematic management a critical success factor. Yet, existing concepts for the management of process knowledge in manufacturing are characterized by major shortcomings. Particularly, they are either exclusively based on structured knowledge, e. g. , formal rules, or on unstructured knowledge, such as documents, and they focus on isolated aspects of manufacturing processes. To address these issues, we present the Manufacturing Knowledge Repository, a holistic repository that consolidates structured and unstructured process knowledge to facilitate knowledge management and process optimization in manufacturing. First, we define requirements, especially the types of knowledge to be handled, e. g. , data mining models and text documents. Next, we develop a conceptual repository data model associating knowledge items and process components such as machines and process steps. Furthermore, we discuss implementation issues including storage architecture variants and finally present a proof of concept based on a prototypical implementation.
Determination of mechanical properties of PECVD silicon nitride thin films for tunable MEMS Fabry–Pérot optical filters

This paper reports an investigation on techniques for determining elastic modulus and intrinsic stress gradient in plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) silicon nitride thin films. The elastic property of the silicon nitride thin films was determined using the nanoindentation method on silicon nitride/silicon bilayer systems. A simple empirical formula was developed to deconvolute the film elastic modulus. The intrinsic stress gradient in the films was determined by using micrometric cantilever beams, cross-membrane structures and mechanical simulation. The deflections of the silicon nitride thin film cantilever beams and cross-membranes caused by in-thickness stress gradients were measured using optical interference microscopy. Finite-element beam models were built to compute the deflection induced by the stress gradient. Matching the deflection computed under a given gradient with that measured experimentally on fabricated samples allows the stress gradient of the PECVD silicon nitride thin films introduced from the fabrication process to be evaluated.
Model Structure of the Na+/H+ Exchanger 1 (NHE1)

Eukaryotic Na+/H+ exchangers are transmembrane proteins that are vital for cellular homeostasis and play key roles in pathological conditions such as cancer and heart diseases. Using the crystal structure of the Na+/H+ antiporter from Escherichia coli (EcNhaA) as a template, we predicted the three-dimensional structure of human Na+/H+ exchanger 1 (NHE1). Modeling was particularly challenging because of the extremely low sequence identity between these proteins, but the model structure is supported by evolutionary conservation analysis and empirical data. It also revealed the location of the binding site of NHE inhibitors; which we validated by conducting mutagenesis studies with EcNhaA and its specific inhibitor 2-aminoperimidine. The model structure features a cluster of titratable residues that are evolutionarily conserved and are located in a conserved region in the center of the membrane; we suggest that they are involved in the cation binding and translocation. We also suggest a hypothetical alternating-access mechanism that involves conformational changes.
Clustered based VM placement strategies

Virtual machine consolidation includes issues like choosing appropriate algorithm for VM selection for migration and placement of VMs to suitable hosts. The reason for migration is caused due to the overutilization or underutilization of physical hosts. Virtual machines are needed to be migrated from overutilized host to guarantee that the demand for computer resources and performance requirements are accomplished. Migration from underutilized host is needed to deactivate that host for saving power consumption. In order to solve the problem of energy and performance, efficient dynamic VM consolidation approach is introduced in literature. In this work, we have proposed multiple redesigned VM placement algorithms and introduced a technique to migrate VMs by clusters by taking into account both CPU utilization and allocated RAM. We ran our simulation on a cloud computing simulation toolkit known as CloudSim using PlanetLab workload data. We make an extensive performance analysis against the default VM placement technique that could be found in ColudSim architecture.
Are episodic context features helpful for refinding tasks?: lessons learnt from a case study with lifelogs

Both psychological theories and findings in information science suggest that people may remember the episodic context of previously encountered information. This implies that a user's episodic memory might be utilized to improve the efficiency or effectiveness of refinding tasks. In this paper, we report a case study which aims to explore the feasibility of integrating episodic context into the design of information refinding systems. The subjects in this study collected 20 months of rich contextual data along including the full text of all documents, emails, web pages and so on, which they accessed during the collection period. We developed a "memory-friendly" system based on psychological theories to test the hypothesis through user studies requiring the subjects to find their personal data using this system. From examination of the user activity log and a post-task questionnaire, we found that although our designed features, which support or utilize episodic context or autobiographical memory, were not used as frequently as we expected, they did improve the effectiveness of the refinding tasks.
Hybrid Chinese Text Chunking

Text chunking is an effective method to decrease the difficulty of natural language parsing. In this paper, a statistical method based on hidden Markov model (HMM) is used for Chinese text chunking. Moreover, a transformation based error-driven learning approach is adopted to improve the performance. The definition of transformation rule templates is the key problem of this machine learning approach. All the templates are learned from the corpus automatically in this paper. The precision using HMM is 88.19% and the precision is 92.67% combining HMM and transformation based error-driven learning
Effect of Fiber Orientation on the Tensile Strength in Fiber-Reinforced Polymeric Composite Materials

The study for strength calculation of one way fiber-reinforced composites and the study measuring precisely fiber orientation distribution were presented. However, because the DB that can predict mechanical properties of composite material and fiber orientation distribution by the fiber content ratio was not constructed, we need the systematic study for that. Therefore, in this study, we investigated what effect the fiber content ratio and fiber orientation distribution have on the strength of composite sheet after making fiber reinforced polymeric composite sheet by changing fiber orientation distribution with the fiber content ratio. The result of this study will become a guide to design data of the most suitable parts design or fiber reinforced polymeric composite sheet that uses the fiber reinforced polymeric composite sheet in industry spot, because it was conducted in terms of developing products. We studied the effect the fiber orientation distribution has on tensile strength of fiber reinforced polymeric composite material and achieved this results below. We can say that the increasing range of the value of fiber reinforced polymeric composite’s tensile strength in the direction of fiber orientation is getting wider as the fiber content ratio increases. It shows that the value of fiber reinforced polymeric composite’s tensile strength in the direction of fiber orientation 90° is similar with the value of polypropylene’s intensity when fiber orientation function is J= 0.7, regardless of the fiber content ratio. Tensile strength of fiber reinforced polymeric composite is affected by the fiber orientation distribution more than by the fiber content ratio.
Statistical Tests of Genetic Association in the Presence of Gene-Gene and Gene-Environment Interactions

Background: While its importance is well recognized, it remains challenging to test genetic association in the presence of gene-gene (or gene-environment) interactions. A major technical difficulty lies in the fact that a general model of gene-gene interactions calls for the use of often a large number of parameters, leading to possibly reduced statistical power. An emerging theme of some recent work is to reduce the number of such parameters through dimension reduction. Wang et al. [2009] proposed such an approach based on the partial least squares (PLS) for dimension reduction. They compared their method with several others using simulated data, establishing that their PLS test performed best. Unfortunately, Wang et al. did not include in their evaluations several powerful tests just recently discovered for analyzing multiple SNPs in a candidate gene or region. Methods: In this paper, we first extend these tests to the current context to detect gene-gene interactions in the presence of nuisance parameters, then compare these tests with the PLS test using the simulated data of Wang et al. [2009]. Results: It is confirmed that some other tests can be more powerful than the PLS test, though there is no uniform winner. Some interesting, albeit not new, observations are also made: some of the new tests are more robust to the large number of parameters in a model and may thus perform well; on the other hand, even for a purely epistatic genetic model, some of the tests applied to a logistic main-effects model without any interaction terms may be superior to that based on a full model that explicitly accounts for gene-gene interactions. Conclusion: The proposed statistical tests are potentially useful in practice.
Robust Navigation in an Unknown Environment With Minimal Sensing and Representation

This paper presents muNav, a novel approach to navigation which, with minimal requirements in terms of onboard sensory, memory, and computational power, exhibits way-finding behaviors in very complex environments. The algorithm is intrinsically robust, since it does not require any internal geometrical representation or self-localization capabilities. Experimental results, performed with both simulated and real robots, validate the proposed theoretical approach.
Brucella abortus Requires the Heme Transporter BhuA for Maintenance of Chronic Infection in BALB/c Mice

ABSTRACT The gene annotated BAB2_1150 in the Brucella abortus 2308 genome sequence is predicted to encode a homolog of the well-characterized heme transporter ShuA of Shigella dysenteriae and accordingly has been given the designation bhuA (Brucella heme utilization). Phenotypic analysis of an isogenic bhuA mutant derived from B. abortus 2308 verified that there is a link between BhuA and the ability of the parent strain to use heme as an iron source in in vitro assays. Maximum expression of bhuA in B. abortus 2308 is observed during stationary phase when this strain in cultivated in low-iron minimal medium, and a comparison of the growth characteristics of the B. abortus bhuA mutant and 2308 in this medium suggested that heme serves as an important iron source for the parent strain during stationary phase. The B. abortus bhuA mutant HR1703 exhibits significant attenuation in cultured murine macrophages compared to strain 2308, and unlike its parent strain, the B. abortus bhuA mutant is unable to maintain a chronic spleen infection in experimentally infected BALB/c mice. These experimental findings suggest that heme and/or heme-containing proteins represent important iron sources for B. abortus 2308 during its residence in the mammalian host and that BhuA is required for efficient utilization of these iron sources.
Comparison of photosensitizers in saline and liposomes for tumor photodynamic therapyand skin phototoxicity

The uptake and distribution, skin phototoxicity, and direct tumor ablative potential of three porphyrin photosensitizers: hematoporphyrin derivative (HPD), dye hemato‐porphyrin ether (DHE), polyhematoporphyrin esters (PHE), and of Rhodamine‐123 (Rh‐123) have been studied in the AJ‐CR inbred albino female mouse implanted with C‐1300 neu‐roblastoma. Photosensitizer delivery was studied using saline and liposome carriers.
Environmentally Sustainable ICT: A Critical Topic for IS Research?

This paper aims to increase awareness and understanding of the environmental sustainability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and to highlight the opportunities for timely action by Information Systems (IS) researchers and practitioners in this field. Through examples from a diversity of literature sources this paper defines the problems and the scope of ICT environmental sustainability. The potential for inclusion of this topic in the mainstream of Information Systems (IS) research is evaluated by testing the definition, scope and examples against both Barki et al.’s (1993) Keyword Classification Scheme for IS Research Literature and a current test for classification as IS research. This paper concludes that: the issue of environmental sustainability of ICT is applicable to the mainstream of IS research; the research issue is sustainable; and warrants urgent action by IS researchers. Contributions include: review of multi-disciplinary literature to better inform the reader; proposal of a definition of the environmental sustainability of ICT derived from the literature; description of the scope; presentation of a rationale for IS researchers to contribute to resolution of the issue; and submission of a research taxonomy to facilitate IS research activity into aspects of the environmental sustainability of ICT.
RAPIDLY ADAPTIVE HEDONIC UTILITY

We consider a simple model of neural decision making in which there is a limited capacity to make fine distinctions. This implies that the evolutionarily optimal hedonic utility function must adapt to the circumstances. The new result here is to derive a readily implementable mechanism by which utility functions adapt rapidly, in real time. That is, if the distribution of rewards shifts, the utility function reacts, to maintain optimal use of the limited capacity to discriminate. Such rapid adaptation of utility is analogous to well-known properties of the visual system, and might well be implemented by similar neural circuitry. In the case that all that matters is the probability of error, the mechanism is particularly simple. If the criterion is instead to maximize expected fitness, we find a mechanism that is approximately optimal. Although such adaptive utility functions take an hedonic interpretation of preference seriously, and incorporate large swings in levels, they are at once approximately consistent with conventional economics. That is, the possibility of suboptimal choice stems only from the limited capacity to make fine distinctions. As this capacity improves, utility remains adaptive, but choice becomes fully optimal.
A fuzzy approach to energy optimized routing for wireless sensor networks

In recent years, many approaches and techniques have been explored for the optimization of energy usage in wireless sensor networks. Routing is one of these areas in which attempts for efficient utilization of energy have been made. These attempts use fixed (crisp) metrics for making energy-aware routing decisions. In this paper, we present a generalized fuzzy logic based approach for energy-aware routing in wireless sensor networks. This generalized approach is soft and tunable and hence it can accommodate sensor networks comprising of different types of sensor nodes having different energy metrics.
Virtual Cultural Identities

Virtual environments and the Internet provide an important medium for interactive collaborative learning. Immersive Virtual Environments appear able to support intuitive interaction techniques and metaphors. Our Identity Authoring Approach is aimed at our multicultural global society, and allows for multiple identities / persona to be created and used as interaction metaphors by users. The approach can be used to generate virtual environments in which the interaction is both intuitive and adaptable to the cultural background of the user, taking into account issues such as gendered and age-based identities. The approach is exemplified by focusing on interaction in virtual learning environments that engage and facilitate the introduction and experience of different cultures, by different users.
Submicrometer Spatial Resolution of Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence

Enhanced fluorescence emission intensity from fluorescein was observed on glass slides covered with thin films of silver nanoparticles using a confocal laser-scanning microscope. The silver nanoparticle film increased the emission intensity of fluorescein by an average of at least three-fold in the area studied. Statistics are given on the enhancement of individual areas of the silver particle film with a resolution of approximately 210 nm. A histogram of intensity values indicates that the enhancement appears to occur without distinct subpopulations, with the exception that very high intensity subpopulations may occur but could not be resolved. Spatial features with dimensions near or smaller than the resolution limit of the confocal microscope, on the silver nanoparticle slide that enhanced the emission of fluorescein, were found using autocorrelation functions. These spatial features are of the same size as those found from the emission of slides containing silver nanoparticles only. These spatial features do not appear in control slides containing fluorescein without any silver nanoparticles. No long-range spatial ordering of the fluorescence enhancement on chemcially deposited silver nanoparticle slides was detected.
Methodology applied problem-based learning in teaching HCI: A case study in usability evaluation of an online course

Problem-based Learning (PBL) is an instructional approach that uses a real problem to focus, motivate and facilitate learning relevant to the future performance of student conceptual, procedural and attitudinal knowledge as professional life. This paper presents and discusses the implementation of PBL teaching model in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), specifically in teaching usability evaluation of an online course. The model was applied to three classes of the HCI course, involving 16 students, a Brazilian University and 82 users. The results are presented in this work.
Throughput, energy consumption, and energy efficiency of IEEE 802.15.6 body area network (BAN) MAC protocol

Low-powered and light-weight sensor nodes will be deployed for e-health services in wireless body area networks (WBANs). Recently, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) introduced a new standard, IEEE 802.15. 6 for wireless body area communications. The goal of this standard is to specify several physical layers (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer protocols for variety of applications with various QoS requirements. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of the IEEE 802.15. 6 WBAN MAC protocol in terms of throughput, power consumption, and energy efficiency under unsaturated conditions. We develop a discrete-time Markov chain based analytical model to evaluate the performance of CSMA/CA based WBAN MAC protocol during contention access phases. To verify the numerical results obtained from analytical model, we performed simulations and compared the results.