Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A universal QoS scheme for web applications

The common QoS metrics include delay, delay jitter, bandwidth guarantee, and so forth. Furthermore, the higher bandwidth requirement is also very important for some web applications, for instance, video on demand. Although QoS in networks has been well investigated during the past two decades, the existing QoS schemes usually aimed to satisfy only one QoS requirement for a particular web application. These schemes lack universality.
NYNEX portholes: initial user reactions and redesign implications

The prevalence of audio and video options on computers, coupled with the promise of bandwidth, have many prognosticators predicting a revolution in human communications. But what if the revolution materializes and no users show up? We were confronted with this question when we began deploying and studying the use of a video-based, background awareness application within our organization. Repeatedly, new users raised strong concerns about self-presentation, surveillance, privacy, video snapshots, and lack of audience cues. We describe how we addressed these concerns by evolving the application. As a consequence, we are also redesigning the user interface to the application.
Brachiaria grass: New forage option for sub-Saharan Africa

About AVCD This material was produced on behalf of the Feed the Future Kenya Accelerated Value Chain Development (AVCD) program. This program seeks to widely apply technologies and innovations for four value chains—dairy, livestock, staple drought tolerant crops and staple root crops—in order to competitively and sustainably increase productivity, contributing to inclusive agricultural growth, nutrition and food security in the country. The main goal of AVCD is to sustainably reduce poverty and hunger in the Feed the Future zones of influence in Kenya.
Circulating Osteocalcin Level Is Not Associated With Incident Type 2 Diabetes in Middle-Aged Male Subjects

OBJECTIVE Recent human studies suggested that serum osteocalcin is associated with the cross-talk between bone and energy metabolism. The aim of this study was to determine whether serum osteocalcin level is independently associated with the development of type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A retrospective cohort study was performed of 1,229 nondiabetic men, aged 25–60 years, who were recruited from the Health Promotion Center, Samsung Medical Center, between January 1997 and December 1997. They were followed regularly at the center on an out-patient basis and during hospitalization for a mean of 8.4 years, and the development of type 2 diabetes was determined. RESULTS In the baseline analysis, BMI, body fat percentage, triglyceride, homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance value, and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 levels varied inversely with the osteocalcin tertiles, and serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels increased with the osteocalcin tertiles. However, no differences were observed in fasting glucose and glycated hemoglobin levels across the osteocalcin tertiles. Incident type 2 diabetes occurred in 90 (7.3%) of the study subjects. In Cox proportional hazards models, however, no statistical differences in the development of type 2 diabetes across the osteocalcin tertiles were evident after adjustment of other risk factors for incident diabetes. CONCLUSIONS Despite baseline associations with favorable metabolic parameters, the serum osteocalcin level was not associated with the development of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged males.
SIFT Based Registration of Remotely-Sensed Imagery

this paper applies one kind of methods of automatic image registration, Scale Invariant Feature Transform(SIFT), into the region of remote sensing images. It has been found that SIFT can extract the features invariant to scale and rotation with specific key point descriptors as matching points for the registration of remote sensing images. Experimental results are discussed in the last part of this paper, and has confirmed the validity of the proposed method.
A deletion polymorphism in the Caenorhabditis elegans RIG-I homolog disables viral RNA dicing and antiviral immunity

RNA interference defends against viral infection in plant and animal cells. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and its natural pathogen, the positive-strand RNA virus Orsay, have recently emerged as a new animal model of host-virus interaction. Using a genome-wide association study in C. elegans wild populations and quantitative trait locus mapping, we identify a 159 base-pair deletion in the conserved drh-1 gene (encoding a RIG-I-like helicase) as a major determinant of viral sensitivity. We show that DRH-1 is required for the initiation of an antiviral RNAi pathway and the generation of virus-derived siRNAs (viRNAs). In mammals, RIG-I-domain containing proteins trigger an interferon-based innate immunity pathway in response to RNA virus infection. Our work in C. elegans demonstrates that the RIG-I domain has an ancient role in viral recognition. We propose that RIG-I acts as modular viral recognition factor that couples viral recognition to different effector pathways including RNAi and interferon responses. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.00994. 001
Virtual spherical lights for many-light rendering of glossy scenes

In this paper, we aim to lift the accuracy limitations of many-light algorithms by introducing a new light type, the virtual spherical light (VSL). The illumination contribution of a VSL is computed over a non-zero solid angle, thus eliminating the illumination spikes that virtual point lights used in traditional many-light methods are notorious for. The VSL enables application of many-light approaches in scenes with glossy materials and complex illumination that could previously be rendered only by much slower algorithms. By combining VSLs with the matrix row-column sampling algorithm, we achieve high-quality images in one to four minutes, even in scenes where path tracing or photon mapping take hours to converge.
Deformation of convergent plates: Evidence from discrepancies between GPS velocities and rigid‐plate motions

Systematic discrepancies between the Global Positioning System (GPS) site velocities and those predicted by plate‐motion models across the Andes, the Himalayan‐Tibetan plateau, and the Taiwan orogen delineate diffuse plate‐boundary deformation and significant intraplate deformation, even in the presumably rigid oceanic plates. The relationship between the GPS velocities and the predictions of plate‐motion models is illustrated using a simple timescale‐dependent mechanical model of plate convergence. A simple stiffness number (ϕ), based on the difference between the predictions of plate‐motion models and the GPS velocity near plate boundaries, provides a convenient measure of the “plate‐like” behavior of convergent plates and strain partitioning between intraplate and interplate deformation.
Gisli Gudjonsson's penchant for corroboration.

Even so, some investigators—but not all—fail to follow these steps with persons who have intellectual disabilities. Some—but not all—misread the defendant’s differences and come to believe, really believe that they ‘‘have the man. ’’ Some—but not all—question them relentlessly for long hours until a confession is squeezed out of them. They do it even when no physical or witness evidence connects the person with a disability to the crime. Fortunately, in the last 10 years, interrogations leading to false confessions is being exposed to the light of day as never before.
AppAware: which mobile applications are hot?

Today most mobile operating systems provide users with an application portal where they can search for applications published by third-party developers. However, finding new apps is not an easy task and requires either to know what to look for or to go through an endless list of applications. In this paper we present work in progress of a platform that allows its users to discover mobile applications in a serendipitous manner. AppAware is a mobile application that captures and shares installations, updates, and removals of Android programs in real time. Accordingly, AppAware allows its users to see what applications are being installed right now or around their position by other people, thus introducing a new way of interaction with application portals and other mobile users.
The Hanle and Zeeman Effects in Solar Spicules: A Novel Diagnostic Window on Chromospheric Magnetism

An attractive diagnostic tool for investigating the magnetism of the solar chromosphere is the observation and theoretical modeling of the Hanle and Zeeman effects in spicules, as shown in this Letter for the first time. Here we report on spectropolarimetric observations of solar chromospheric spicules in the He I λ10830 multiplet and on their theoretical modeling accounting for radiative transfer effects. We find that the magnetic field in the observed (quiet-Sun) spicular material at a height of about 2000 km above the visible solar surface has a strength of the order of 10 G and is inclined by approximately 35° with respect to the local vertical direction. Our empirical finding based on full Stokes vector spectropolarimetry should be taken into account in future magnetohydrodynamical simulations of spicules.
Seniors in international residential tourism: looking for quality of life

Abstract This research was conducted in golf resorts, questioning tourists living in Portugal. Principal component analysis highlighted determinants of quality of life (QOL) of senior residential tourists. An ordered probit model evaluated what matters most to seniors seeking to achieve their desired level of well-being. Aesthetics of locations, perceived value, medical assistance, socialization, and community involvement contribute to decisions to establish a second residence in Portugal – either to ensure a good QOL at retirement or permit longer periodic stays. Results show that quality of neighbourhoods explains their aesthetic value and suggest that local social relationships matter. Beauty, security, and safety are equally important. This is one of the first studies suggesting that aesthetics in neighbourhoods explain QOL of senior residential tourists.
A Neurodynamic Account of Spontaneous Behaviour

The current article suggests that deterministic chaos self-organized in cortical dynamics could be responsible for the generation of spontaneous action sequences. Recently, various psychological observations have suggested that humans and primates can learn to extract statistical structures hidden in perceptual sequences experienced during active environmental interactions. Although it has been suggested that such statistical structures involve chunking or compositional primitives, their neuronal implementations in brains have not yet been clarified. Therefore, to reconstruct the phenomena, synthetic neuro-robotics experiments were conducted by using a neural network model, which is characterized by a generative model with intentional states and its multiple timescales dynamics. The experimental results showed that the robot successfully learned to imitate tutored behavioral sequence patterns by extracting the underlying transition probability among primitive actions. An analysis revealed that a set of primitive action patterns was embedded in the fast dynamics part, and the chaotic dynamics of spontaneously sequencing these action primitive patterns was structured in the slow dynamics part, provided that the timescale was adequately set for each part. It was also shown that self-organization of this type of functional hierarchy ensured robust action generation by the robot in its interactions with a noisy environment. This article discusses the correspondence of the synthetic experiments with the known hierarchy of the prefrontal cortex, the supplementary motor area, and the primary motor cortex for action generation. We speculate that deterministic dynamical structures organized in the prefrontal cortex could be essential because they can account for the generation of both intentional behaviors of fixed action sequences and spontaneous behaviors of pseudo-stochastic action sequences by the same mechanism.
Power Grid Analysis Using a Flexible Conjugate Gradient Algorithm with Sparsification

In this paper, we present a flexible conjugate gradient method that is tailored to the solution of the truly large-scale linear systems arising in VLSI power grid analysis. The algorithm allows changing preconditioners and sparsification of the search direction at each iteration. As a consequence, this variant of the conjugate gradient algorithm becomes compatible with implementations that avoid the modeling and representation of numerically irrelevant portions of the problem, and take natural advantage of the local and sparse nature of the solutions. The paper presents the flexible conjugate gradient algorithm in detail and explores strategies for preconditioning and sparsification. The algorithm is applied to a number of realistic power grid examples.
Detection of DDoS Traffic by Using the Technical Analysis Used in the Stock Market

We propose a method for detecting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) traffic in real-time inside the network. For this purpose, we borrow the concepts of Moving Average Convergence Divergence, Rate of Change, and Relative Strength Index, which are used for technical analysis in the stock market. Due to the fact that the method is based on a quantitative, rather than a heuristic, detection level, DDoS traffic can be detected with greater accuracy (by reducing the false alarm ratio). Through detection algorithm and simulation results, we show how the detection level is determined and demonstrate the degree to which the accuracy of detection is enhanced.
System and method for projection of subsurface structure onto an object's surface

An imaging system and method illuminates body tissue with infrared light to enhance visibility of a vascular structure, and generates an image of the body tissue and the subcutaneous blood vessels based on reflected infrared light. The system includes an infrared illumination source for generating the infrared light and a structure for diffusing the infrared light. The system further includes an imaging device for receiving the infrared light reflected from the body tissue and for generating an enhanced image of the body tissue based on the reflected infrared light. The enhanced image is produced by contrast enhancement techniques involving applications of an unsharp mask. The system further includes a project a projector for receiving an output signal from the imaging device and for projecting the enhanced image onto the body tissue.
Breastfeeding and risk of inflammatory bowel disease: a systematic review with meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND It has long been believed that breastfeeding provides protection against ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease. Studies designated to test this hypothesis were conducted without reaching conclusive results. OBJECTIVE The aim of this meta-analysis was to examine the role of breastfeeding in preventing inflammatory bowel disease and to summarize the evidence gathered about this subject. DESIGN A meta-analysis was performed on 17 relevant articles that were found by using MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Internet, and articles' references. The publications were fully reviewed and divided, on the basis of their quality, into 3 groups. RESULTS Studies showed heterogeneous results. The pooled odds ratios of all the 17 reviewed studies, calculated according to the random-effects model, were 0.67 (95% CI: 0.52, 0.86) for Crohn disease and 0.77 (0.61, 0.96) for ulcerative colitis. However, only 4 studies for Crohn disease and 4 for ulcerative colitis were eventually included in the highest quality group. In this group, the pooled odds ratio was 0.45 (0.26, 0.79) for Crohn disease and 0.56 (0.38, 0.81) for ulcerative colitis. CONCLUSIONS The results of this meta-analysis support the hypothesis that breastfeeding is associated with lower risks of Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis. However, because only a few studies were graded to be of high quality, we suggest that further research, conducted with good methodology and large sample sizes, should be carried out to strengthen the validity of these observations.
Lipid Peroxidation in Brain Tissue Following Administration of Low and High Doses of Arsenite and L-Ascorbate in Wistar Strain Rats

This study aimed at investigating the mechanism by which sodium arsenite induces brain injury and the role of L-ascorbate. T0 hirty adult (n=5) Wistar rats weighing between 140 and 160 g were used. Group 1 neither received sodium arsenite nor L-ascorbate (control), group 2 was administered low dose of arsenite only, group 3 received high dose of arsenite only, group 4 was administered L-ascorbate only, group 5 was administered low dose of arsenite and L-ascorbate, and group 6 received high dose of arsenite and L-ascorbate. M0 alon dialdehyde, MDA, levels were significantly increased in rats treated with high dose of arsenite when compared with those treated with low dose of arsenite. However, all treated groups except those treated with L-ascorbate only showed significant increase in MDA levels when compared with the control group. Rats treated with high dose of arsenite and L-ascorbate showed a significantly higher MDA level than those treated with low dose of arsenite and L-ascorbate. However, catalase activity, body weight gain, brain weight and mean food consumption were comparable across all groups. Brain tissue total protein was similar in all groups except in both groups treated with high dose of arsenite, where they were significantly reduced when compared with the control group. I0 n conclusion, sodium arsenite treatment induces brain injury via a mechanism associated with lipid peroxidation, but not catalase-dependent. However, L-ascorbate ameliorates arsenite-induced oxidative injury in the brain. L-ascorbate antioxidative potential in alleviating arsenite-induced brain injury is dependent on the concentration of arsenite.
Database-Backed Program Analysis for Scalable Error Propagation

Software is rapidly increasing in size and complexity. Static analyses must be designed to scale well if they are to be usable with realistic applications, but prior efforts have often been limited by available memory. We propose a database-backed strategy for large program analysis based on graph algorithms, using a Semantic Web database to manage representations of the program under analysis. Our approach is applicable to a variety of interprocedural finite distributive subset (IFDS) dataflow problems; we focus on error propagation as a motivating example. Our implementation analyzes multi-million-line programs quickly and in just a fraction of the memory required by prior approaches. When memory alone is insufficient, our approach falls back on disk using several hybrid configurations tuned to put all available resources to good use.
Implications of Habitat Loss on Seed Predation and Early Recruitment of a Keystone Palm in Anthropogenic Landscapes in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest

Habitat loss is the main driver of the loss of global biodiversity. Knowledge on this subject, however, is highly concentrated on species richness and composition patterns, with little discussion on the consequences of habitat loss for ecological interactions. Therefore, a systemic approach is necessary to maximize the success of conservation efforts by providing more realistic information about the effects of anthropogenic disturbances on natural environmental processes. We investigated the implications of habitat loss for the early recruitment of Euterpe edulis Martius, a keystone palm in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, in nine sampling sites located in landscapes with different percentages of forest cover (9%-83%). We conducted a paired experiment using E. Edulis seeds set up in experimental stations composed of a vertebrate exclosure versus an open treatment. We used ANCOVA models with treatments as factors to assess the influence of habitat loss on the number of germinated seeds, predation by vertebrates and invertebrates, infestation by fungi, and number of seedlings established. Habitat loss did not affect the probability of transition from a dispersed to a germinated seed. However, when seeds were protected from vertebrate removal, seedling recruitment showed a positive relationship with the amount of forest cover. Seed infestation by fungi was not significant, and seed predation was the main factor limiting seed recruitment. The loss of forest cover antagonistically affected the patterns of seed predation by vertebrates and invertebrates; predation by invertebrates was higher in less forested areas, and predation by vertebrates was higher in forested areas. When seeds were exposed to the action of all biotic mortality factors, the number of recruited seedlings was very low and unrelated to habitat loss. This result indicates that the opposite effects of seed predation by vertebrates and invertebrates mask a differential response of E. edulis recruitment to habitat loss.
Measuring Early Communication in Spanish Speaking Children: The Communication Complexity Scale in Peru.

BACKGROUND There is a great need in the United States to develop presymbolic evaluation tools that are widely available and accurate for individuals that come from a bilingual and/or multicultural setting. The Communication Complexity Scale (CCS) is a measure that evaluates expressive presymbolic communication including gestures, vocalizations and eye gaze. Studying the effectiveness of this tool in a Spanish speaking environment was undertaken to determine the applicability of the CCS with Spanish speaking children. Methods & Procedures: In 2011-2012, researchers from the University of Kansas and Centro Ann Sullivan del Perú (CASP) investigated communication in a cohort of 71 young Spanish speaking children with developmental disabilities and a documented history of self-injurious, stereotyped and aggressive behaviors. Communication was assessed first by parental report with translated versions of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (CSBS), a well-known assessment of early communication, and then eleven months later with the CCS. HYPOTHESIS We hypothesized that the CCS and the CSBS measures would be significantly correlated in this population of Spanish speaking children. OUTCOMES & RESULTS The CSBS scores from time 1 with a mean participant age of 41 months were determined to have a strong positive relationship to the CCS scores obtained at time 2 with a mean participant age of 52 months. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS The CCS is strongly correlated to a widely accepted measure of early communication. These findings support the validity of the Spanish version of the CCS and demonstrate its usefulness for children from another culture and for children in a Spanish speaking environment.