Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BUNGEE: An Elasticity Benchmark for Self-Adaptive IaaS Cloud Environments

Today's infrastructure clouds provide resource elasticity (i.e. Auto-scaling) mechanisms enabling self-adaptive resource provisioning to reflect variations in the load intensity over time. These mechanisms impact on the application performance, however, their effect in specific situations is hard to quantify and compare. To evaluate the quality of elasticity mechanisms provided by different platforms and configurations, respective metrics and benchmarks are required. Existing metrics for elasticity only consider the time required to provision and deprovision resources or the costs impact of adaptations. Existing benchmarks lack the capability to handle open workloads with realistic load intensity profiles and do not explicitly distinguish between the performance exhibited by the provisioned underlying resources, on the one hand, and the quality of the elasticity mechanisms themselves, on the other hand. In this paper, we propose reliable metrics for quantifying the timing aspects and accuracy of elasticity. Based on these metrics, we propose a novel approach for benchmarking the elasticity of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms independent of the performance exhibited by the provisioned underlying resources. We show that the proposed metrics provide consistent ranking of elastic platforms on an ordinal scale. Finally, we present an extensive case study of real-world complexity demonstrating that the proposed approach is applicable in realistic scenarios and can cope with different levels of resource efficiency.
Security specification and implementation for mobile e-health services

Different IT applications require different security services. We have been working in the area of e-health applications in a mobile environment, and we have needed to integrate specific security services. We present those security services for mobile e-health services and how we have implemented them. First, the different security threats specially oriented to the e-health applications are described, like patients' data eavesdropping and manipulation. Afterwards, the different security mechanisms to address these specific security threats are described, e.g. data confidentiality and integrity, together with the restrictions of dynamic IP addresses. Following, the specification of security services requirements and the implementation possibilities to address them in the mobile e-health services are described. As an example of security services integrated into an e-health system, we include the description of the mobile e-health service MobiHealth, an application developed under the MobiHealth project, cofunded by the European Commission (IST-2001-36006), focused on the security services added to it.
The network is the database: data management for highly distributed systems

This paper describes the methodology and implementation of a data management system for highly distributed systems, which was built to solve the scalability and reliability problems faced in a wide area postal logistics application developed at Siemens. The core of the approach is to borrow from Internet routing protocols, and their proven scalability and robustness, to build a network-embedded dynamic database index, and to augment schema definition to optimize the use of this index. The system was developed with an eye toward future applications in the area of sensor networks.
The power of negative thinking.

Computer Engineering Program, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI, USA Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA Imaging Genetics Center, and Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Keck School of Medicine of USC, CA, USA Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
A Method of Tracking the Peak Power Points for a Variable Speed Wind Energy Conversion System

In this paper, a method of tracking the peak power in a wind energy conversion system (WECS) is proposed, which is independent of the turbine parameters and air density. The algorithm searches for the peak power by varying the speed in the desired direction. The generator is operated in the speed control mode with the speed reference being dynamically modified in accordance with the magnitude and direction of change of active power. The peak power points in the P -¿ curve correspond to dP / d¿ = 0. This fact is made use of in the optimum point search algorithm. The generator considered is a wound rotor induction machine whose stator is connected directly to the grid and the rotor is fed through back-to-back PWM converters. Stator flux-oriented vector control is applied to control the active and reactive current loops independently. The turbine characteristics are generated by a dc motor fed from a commercial dc drive. All the control loops are executed by a single-chip DSP controller TMS320F240. Experimental results show that the performance of the control algorithm compares well with the conventional torque control method.
Coordination of Free/Libre Open Source Software Development

The apparent success of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development projects such as Linux, Apache, and many others has raised the question, what lessons from FLOSS development can be transferred to mainstream software development? In this paper, we use coordination theory to analyze coordination mechanisms in FLOSS development and compare our analysis with existing literature on coordination in proprietary software development. We examined developer interaction data from three active and successful FLOSS projects and used content analysis to identify the coordination mechanisms used by the participants. We found that there were similarities between the FLOSS groups and the reported practices of the proprietary project in the coordination mechanisms used to manage task-task dependencies. However, we found clear differences in the coordination mechanisms used to manage task-actor dependencies. While published descriptions of proprietary software development involved an elaborate system to locate the developer who owned the relevant piece of code, we found that “self-assignment” was the most common mechanism across three FLOSS projects. This coordination mechanism is consistent with expectations for distributed and largely volunteer teams. We conclude by discussing whether these emergent practices can be usefully transferred to mainstream practice and indicating directions for future research.
Cross-domain Generative Learning for Fine-Grained Sketch-Based Image Retrieval

The key challenge for learning a ﬁne-grained sketch-based image retrieval (FG-SBIR) model is to bridge the domain gap between photo and sketch. Existing models learn a deep joint embedding space with discriminative losses where a photo and a sketch can be compared. In this paper, we propose a novel discriminative-generative hybrid model by introducing a generative task of cross-domain image synthesis. This task enforces the learned embedding space to preserve all the domain invariant information that is useful for cross-domain reconstruction, thus explicitly reducing the domain gap as opposed to existing models. Extensive experiments on the largest FG-SBIR dataset Sketchy [19] show that the proposed model signiﬁcantly outperforms state-of-the-art discriminative FG-SBIR models.
Large-scale evidence of dependency length minimization in 37 languages

Significance We provide the first large-scale, quantitative, cross-linguistic evidence for a universal syntactic property of languages: that dependency lengths are shorter than chance. Our work supports long-standing ideas that speakers prefer word orders with short dependency lengths and that languages do not enforce word orders with long dependency lengths. Dependency length minimization is well motivated because it allows for more efficient parsing and generation of natural language. Over the last 20 y, the hypothesis of a pressure to minimize dependency length has been invoked to explain many of the most striking recurring properties of languages. Our broad-coverage findings support those explanations. Explaining the variation between human languages and the constraints on that variation is a core goal of linguistics. In the last 20 y, it has been claimed that many striking universals of cross-linguistic variation follow from a hypothetical principle that dependency length—the distance between syntactically related words in a sentence—is minimized. Various models of human sentence production and comprehension predict that long dependencies are difficult or inefficient to process; minimizing dependency length thus enables effective communication without incurring processing difficulty. However, despite widespread application of this idea in theoretical, empirical, and practical work, there is not yet large-scale evidence that dependency length is actually minimized in real utterances across many languages; previous work has focused either on a small number of languages or on limited kinds of data about each language. Here, using parsed corpora of 37 diverse languages, we show that overall dependency lengths for all languages are shorter than conservative random baselines. The results strongly suggest that dependency length minimization is a universal quantitative property of human languages and support explanations of linguistic variation in terms of general properties of human information processing.
HyScale: Hybrid Scaling of Dockerized Microservices Architectures

HyScale: Hybrid Scaling of Dockerized Microservices Architectures Jonathon Paul Wong Master of Applied Science The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto 2018 Recently, microservices architectures have garnered the attention of many organizations— providing higher levels of scalability, availability, and fault isolation. Many organizations choose to host their microservices architectures in cloud data centres to offset costs. Incidentally, data centres become over-encumbered during peak usage hours and underutilized during off-peak hours. Traditional scaling methods perform either horizontal or vertical scaling exclusively. When used in combination, however, both offer complementary benefits and compensate for each other’s deficiencies. To leverage the high availability of horizontal scaling and the fine-grained resource control of vertical scaling, two novel reactive hybrid autoscaling algorithms are presented and benchmarked against Google’s popular Kubernetes horizontal algorithm. Results indicated up to 1.49x speedups in response times, 10 times fewer failed requests, and 35% increase in resource efficiencies. Moreover, a novel predictive approach is also explored using neural networks and a custom online learning technique indicating prediction errors as low as 3.77%.
Paleoclimate, ecoregion size, and degree of isolation explain regional biodiversity differences among terrestrial vertebrates within the Congo Basin

One of the most widely recognized patterns in ecology is the increase in species richness from poles to tropics. Literature suggests that the Congolian lowland rainforest does not follow this pattern: the Central Congolian forest (CCLF), south of the Congo River, is thought to harbor fewer vertebrate species and endemics than the Northeastern (NELF) and Northwestern lowland rainforests (NWLF) north of the Congo River. We used data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) database on terrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, and reptiles), to test whether differences in sampling effort caused the irregular biodiversity pattern in this region. Our results show that even though the diversity within the Congolian lowland rainforests remains to be fully mapped, current differences in richness are unlikely to be caused by undersampling alone. We argue that the lower vertebrate richness in the CCLF is due to both its relatively small size and isolated position: Forest cover fluctuated throughout the history of the Congo Basin due to climatic variability, reducing speciation and increasing extinction, while immigration towards the CCLF is limited due to the barrier effect of the Congo River. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of both fundamental ecology and conservation management.
ORTHOGONAL SIMPLIFICATION OF OBJECTS REPRESENTED BY THE EXTREME VERTEX MODEL

This work presents a new approach to simplify objects. It is restricted to orthogonal pseudo-polyhedra (OPP) and binary volumes. The method produces a level-of-detail (LOD) sequence of OPP and it is incremental. Any object in this sequence is a bounding OPP of the previous objects. The sequence finishes with the minimum axis-aligned bounding box. OPP are represented by the Extreme Vertices Model. Simplification is achieved using a new approach called merging faces that relies on the application of 2D Boolean operations.
mirAct: a web tool for evaluating microRNA activity based on gene expression data

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are critical regulators in the complex cellular networks. The mirAct web server (http://sysbio.ustc.edu.cn/software/mirAct) is a tool designed to investigate miRNA activity based on gene-expression data by using the negative regulation relationship between miRNAs and their target genes. mirAct supports multiple-class data and enables clustering analysis based on computationally determined miRNA activity. Here, we describe the framework of mirAct, demonstrate its performance by comparing with other similar programs and exemplify its applications using case studies.
Screening of the Yeast yTHC Collection Identifies Essential Host Factors Affecting Tombusvirus RNA Recombination

ABSTRACT RNA recombination is a major process in promoting rapid virus evolution in an infected host. A previous genome-wide screen with the yeast single-gene deletion library of 4,848 strains, representing ∼80% of all genes of yeast, led to the identification of 11 host genes affecting RNA recombination in Tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV), a small model plant virus (E. Serviene, N. Shapka, C. P. Cheng, T. Panavas, B. Phuangrat, J. Baker, and P. D. Nagy, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102:10545-10550, 2005). To further test the role of host genes in viral RNA recombination, in this paper, we extended the screening to 800 essential yeast genes present in the yeast Tet-promoters Hughes Collection (yTHC). In total, we identified 16 new host genes that either increased or decreased the ratio of TBSV recombinants to the nonrecombined TBSV RNA. The identified essential yeast genes are involved in RNA transcription/metabolism, in protein metabolism/transport, or unknown cellular processes. Detailed analysis of the effect of the identified yeast genes revealed that they might affect RNA recombination by altering (i) the ratio of the two viral replication proteins, (ii) the stability of the viral RNA, and/or (iii) the replicability of the recombinant RNAs. Overall, this and previous works firmly establish that a set of essential and nonessential host genes could affect TBSV recombination and evolution.
Sensitivity analysis on a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic model for diisopropylfluorophosphate-induced toxicity in mice and rats

A physiologically-based pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic (PBPK/PD) model was recently developed to study the effect of diisopropylfluorophosphate (DFP) on acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity in mouse and rat. That model takes into account relatively complex interactions involving many parameters, some of which may be uncertain and/or highly variable, especially those characterizing AChE activity after DFP intoxication. The primary objective of this study was to identify parameters that contribute most to the variability of AChE dynamics for model optimization against data. For this purpose, the influence of the variability of the rate constants for synthesis (Ksyn) and degradation (Kdeg) of AChE, and regeneration (Kreg) and aging (Kage) of inhibited AChE on the variability of AChE activity in mice and rat venous blood and brain was first calculated by a global sensitivity analysis. Next, the mouse PBPK/PD model was calibrated by optimizing the values of Ksyn, Kdeg, Kreg and Kage. Thereafter, scale-up of the DFP-induced AChE activity was performed from mouse to rat. Validation of the rat model was performed by comparing the time course of venous blood and brain AChE activities from a Monte Carlo analysis to those obtained in vivo. Sensitivity analysis on the verified models showed that Kreg and Ksyn were the most influential factors of AChE activity at shorter and longer durations, respectively, after DFP challenge. Scale-up of the AChE dynamics from mouse to rat was also successful, as evidenced by significant overlapping between the predicted 95th percentile confidence intervals and the experimental data.
Associations of diet with albuminuria and kidney function decline.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Sparse longitudinal data exist on how diet influences microalbuminuria and estimated GFR (eGFR) decline in people with well-preserved kidney function. DESIGN, SETTINGS, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS Of the 3348 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study who had data on urinary albumin to creatinine ratio in 2000, 3296 also had data on eGFR change between 1989 and 2000. Cumulative average intake of nutrients over 14 years was derived from semiquantitative food frequency questionnaires answered in 1984, 1986, 1990, 1994, and 1998. Microalbuminuria presence and eGFR decline > or = 30% were the outcomes of interest. RESULTS Compared with the lowest quartile, the highest quartile of animal fat (odds ratio (OR): 1.72; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.12 to 2.64) and two or more servings of red meat per week (OR: 1.51; 95% CI: 1.01 to 2.26) were directly associated with microalbuminuria. After adjustment for other nutrients individually associated with eGFR decline > or = 30%, only the highest quartile of sodium intake remained directly associated (OR: 1.52; 95% CI: 1.10 to 2.09), whereas beta-carotene appeared protective (OR: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.43 to 0.89). Results did not vary by diabetes status for microalbuminuria and eGFR outcomes or in those without hypertension at baseline for eGFR decline. No significant associations were seen for other types of protein, fat, vitamins, folate, fructose, or potassium. CONCLUSIONS Higher dietary intake of animal fat and two or more servings per week of red meat may increase risk for microalbuminuria. Lower sodium and higher beta-carotene intake may reduce risk for eGFR decline.
Impact evaluation of a conditional cash transfer program: the Nicaraguan Red de Protección Social

"In 2000, the Nicaraguan government implemented a conditional cash transfer program designed to improve the nutritional, health, and educational status of poor households, and thereby to reduce short- and long-term poverty. Based on the Mexican government's successful PROGRESA program, Nicaragua's Red de Proteccion Social (RPS) sought to supplement household income, reduce primary school dropout rates, and increase the health care and nutritional status of children under the age of five. This report represents IFPRI's evaluation of phase I of RPS. It shows that the program was effective in low-income areas and particularly effective when addressing health care and education needs. The report offers the first extensive assessment of a Nicaraguan government antipoverty program. " Authors' Abstract
Mental health epidemiology today: a monitor of distress

Scott Henderson’s lucid editorial, as its title implies, is firmly anchored in the present day. As a yardstick of progress, however, it may be useful to compare his review with one written nearly 50 years ago, which likewise took as its starting point Morris’ list of seven ‘uses of epidemiology’ (Shepherd & Cooper, 1964). Although its authors managed to cite mental health research on each of the seven, their quest took them to the edges of psychiatric practice (e.g. mental handicap, accident-proneness, tension headache and psychosomatic aspects of peptic ulcer). The present editorial, in contrast, can draw upon national prevalence surveys in a score of countries as well as causally oriented research focusing on schizophrenia, affective disorder and other central concerns of today’s clinical specialty. The simple comparison points to an impressive growth in volume and scope of psychiatric epidemiology over the past half century. How far has this expansion been reflected in substantive scientific achievement? In order to address the question, let us consider briefly each in turn of Henderson’s ‘four significant questions’.
Music analysis, retrieval and synthesis of audio signals MARSYAS

Marsyas is an open source software framework for music analysis, retrieval and synthesis with specific emphasis on Music Information Retreival applications. It has been in development for 10 years and has been used for a variety of projects in both academia and industry in several countries. Based on a novel dataflow architecture named implicit patching it provides a variety of existing processing modules for digital signal processing, machine learning and audio input/output that can be combined at run-time to form complex dataflow networks expressing audio processing algorithms (black-box functionality). In addition it allows the easy addition of new processing modules that need to be compiled for performance purposes. Finally Marsyas is designed with inter-operability in mind and provides various mechanisms for communicating with other software including bindings to the run-time functionality in scripting languages (Python, Ruby), run-time data interchange with MATLAB, support for the Music Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol and Open Sound Control (OSC) for communicating with controller devices, and infrastructure for easy interfacing to the GUI components of the Qt toolkit.
Ryanodine receptor antibodies in myasthenia gravis: Epitope mapping and effect on calcium release in vitro

Patients with myasthenia gravis can have antibodies against skeletal muscle ryanodine receptor (Ry1), the sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium‐release channel, which plays a crucial role in excitation–contraction coupling. We have screened a panel of overlapping Ry1 fusion proteins with Ry1 antibody–containing myasthenia gravis sera to identify the main immunogenic region. The pc2 Ry1 fusion protein representing a Ry1 region close to the N‐terminus (residues 799–1172) was identified as the main immunogenic region for the antibodies. The binding kinetics of the Ry1 antibodies to the pc2 Ry1 fusion protein were tested using an optical biosensor. Ry1 antibodies in the IgG fraction from sera of patients with myasthenia gravis bound with high affinity and with a stoichiometry of 1:1. The functional effect of these Ry1 antibodies was tested in an in vitro Ca2+‐release assay. The Ry1 antibodies induced a twofold increase of the half‐maximal concentration for 4‐Cl‐m‐cresol–induced Ca2+ release from terminal cisternae vesicles but had no effect on Vmax. The effect on 4‐Cl‐m‐cresol–induced Ca2+ release was specific, as preincubation of the active IgG fraction with the pc2 Ry1 fusion protein abolished the inhibition. These data suggest that the Ry1 sequence defined by residues 799–1172 is involved in the regulation of Ry1 function, and that this regulation could be functionally affected in vivo in patients with myasthenia gravis. Muscle Nerve 27: 81–89, 2003