Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploiting Coarse Grain Non-Shared Regions in Snoopy Coherent Multiprocessors

It has been shown that many requests miss in all remote nodes in shared memory multiprocessors. We are motivated by the observation that this behavior extends to much coarser grain areas of memory. We define a region to be a continuous, aligned memory area whose size is a power of two and observe that many requests find that no other node caches a block in the same region even for regions as large as 16K bytes (it has already been known that this phenomenon applies to the special cases of a block or a page). We propose RegionScout, a family of simple filter mechanisms that dynamically detect most non-shared regions. A node with a RegionScout filter can determine in advance that a request will miss in all remote nodes. RegionScout filters are implemented as a layered extension over existing snoop-based coherence systems. They require no changes to existing coherence protocols or caches and impose no constraints on what can be cached simultaneously. Their operation is completely transparent to software and the operating system. RegionScout filters require little additional storage and a single additional global signal. These characteristics are made possible by utilizing imprecise information about the regions cached in each node. Since they rely on dynamically collected information RegionScout filters can adapt to changing sharing patterns. We present two applications of RegionScout: In the first RegionScout is used to avoid broadcasts for non-shared regions thus reducing bandwidth. In the second RegionScout is used to avoid snoop induced tag lookups thus reducing energy.
A Multi-server Architecture Authentication Protocol Using Smart Card

When user wants to access a network service, he/she must authenticate his/herself to the server. With the increasing of the different network services, it is extremely hard for user to remember the different ID and password, so the multi-server authentication protocols have been proposed to solve this problem. There are some authentication protocols for multi-server architecture using smart cards, but there are some serious secure problems in their schemes. The protocols they proposed cannot resist the replay attack, the impersonation attack, etc. So we propose a multi-server architecture authentication protocol with dynamic identify and smart card based on Lee et al.'s scheme. Our protocol can resist several kinds of attacks and remove the aforementioned weaknesses of their protocol. In this paper, we first provide a brief view of the multi-server architecture which is used in the authentication protocol, then we propose our multi-server architecture authentication protocol and give a security analysis of our proposed protocol, finally we make a comparison with our protocol and some other multi-server architecture authentication protocols.
Model predictive control for a two wheeled self balancing robot

In this paper, a model predictive control is presented and applied to a two wheeled self balancing robot. This robot is known as a three-degree-of-freedom mobile robot with multivariable underactuated dynamics. The dynamic equations of the system are first introduced and the inputs and outputs are assigned. Then, by using a compensator block in sequential closing loop method, the original system is transformed into two subsystems. The model predictive controller is designed for maintaining robot in balance despite the external disturbances. The robustness of the method is evaluated in the presence of sinusoidal and step-like disturbances. The simulation results are also presented and discussed using Matlab software.
Introduction to Two P2P Network Based Reputation Systems

Peer-to-peer (P2P) network is an important information sharing architecture. The original design of P2P networks assumes peers in the networks altruistically contribute their resources to others. However, most peers are unwilling to cooperate with each other without incentives and it leads to a so called "free-riding" behavior. Issues such as "hotspot" and "tragedy of the digital commons" are coming along with serious free-riding problems. Eventually, the prevalence of free riders will downgrade the performance of entire system and make it vulnerable. One way to encourage resource sharing is through service differentiation based on peer's contributions to the communities. This paper presents two reputation systems for P2P networks. One of them uses fuzzy logic method which uses requester's reputation and provider's inbound bandwidth as input information to create incentives for sharing and to avoid over-loading problems for primary file providers. The other one utilizes the clustering effect of virtual communities for reputation management. Reputation sharing in systems is implemented by decentralized selective polling which determines a peer's global contribution. The use of selective polling can significantly decrease overheads for reputation sharing. I illustrate the structures and algorithms for these two methods separately and I try to compare system performances for both methods.
Intensive mentoring: Stimulations of and barriers to coaching, spiritual guiding and discipling relationships

After reviewing data from over 600 case studies of mentoring, Stanley and Clinton (1993) concluded many people long for intensive mentoring relationships yet miss out on opportunities because they simply do not understand the true nature of mentoring. The stories of my intensive mentors and their mentors will bring greater clarity, depth, breadth, and an applied perspective to intensive mentors on Stanley and Clinton 's mentorship continuum. The goal of my qualitative research was to provide an opportunity for the reader to connect to my story and the stories of my mentors to draw conclusions for themselves concerning pieces of the research that will apply to his or her life. I learned that each mentoring relationship has a unique set of needs, a different level of interest in being a mentoree, a different scope of qualities he or she is attracted to and a different amount of time to invest in being a mentoree. This study provides evidence that it would be incredibly difficult to create a formal mentoring program for the nine relationships in this study, let alone multiple mentoring relationships in organizations from year to year. A human aspect is necessary to make mentoring relationships successful. Attraction, time and love are the only three common stimulators in intensive mentoring relationships based on the literature and the nine interviews in this study. I recommend that anyone who serves in an organization with a mentoring program ask themselves the following questions: Does our organization have an effective mentoring program? How can organizations learn what aspects mentorees are attracted to in a mentor? How can organizations allow mentorees and mentors to spend quality time together? How can organizations learn about situations where mentors and mentorees traverse through difficult situations and then allow for mentors and for mentorees to spend more time together? Even though each mentoring relationship has a unique set of circumstances, knowing the basics of mentoring relationships can stimulate these mentoring relationships to deepen. This research will be important because it will have implications for anyone who serves as a mentor or is a mentee of another person. INTENSIVE MENTORING: STIMULATORS OF AND BARRIERS TO COACHING, SPIRITUAL GUIDING AND DISCIPLING RELATIONSHIPS A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Education Dr. David K. Else, Chair Dr. Nicholas J. P e, C Dr. Dewitt R. Jones, Committee Member David Alan De Jong University of Northern Iowa December 2012
CT Diagnosis of Fitz-Hugh and Curtis Syndrome: Value of the Arterial Phase Scan

Objective We wanted to evaluate the role of the arterial phase (AP) together with the portal venous phase (PP) scans in the diagnosis of Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome (FHCS) with using computed tomography (CT). Materials and Methods Twenty-five patients with FHCS and 25 women presenting with non-specifically diagnosed acute abdominal pain and who underwent biphasic CT examinations were evaluated. The AP scan included the upper abdomen, and the PP scan included the whole abdomen. Two radiologists blindly and retrospectively reviewed the PP scans first and then they reviewed the AP plus PP scans. The diagnostic accuracy of FHCS on each image set was compared for each reader by analyzing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (Az). Weighted kappa (wk) statistics were used to measure the interobserver agreement for the presence of CT signs of the pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) on the PP images and FHCS as the diagnosis based on the increased perihepatic enhancement on both sets of images. Results The individual diagnostic accuracy of FHCS was higher on the biphasic images (Az = 0.905 and 0.942 for reader 1 and 2, respectively) than on the PP images alone (Az = 0.806 and 0.706, respectively). The interobserver agreement for the presence of PID on the PP images was moderate (wk = 0.530). The interobserver agreement for FHCS as the diagnosis was moderate on only the PP images (wk = 0.413), but it was substantial on the biphasic images (wk = 0.719). Conclusion Inclusion of the AP scan is helpful to depict the increased perihepatic enhancement, and it improves the diagnostic accuracy of FHCS on CT.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staff Report 263 What Determines Labor Productivity?: Lessons from the Dramatic Recovery of the U.s. and Canadian Iron-ore Industries since Their Early 1980s Crisis *

In the early 1980s, as a result of unprecedented developments in the world steel market, iron-ore was entering the Great Lakes from as far away as South America. The Great Lakes regional producers, that is, the U.S. and Canadian iron-ore industries, faced a major crisis that cast doubt on their future. In response to the crisis, these iron-ore industries dramatically changed how they produced iron-ore, in the process doubling their labor productivity and pushing foreign competition out of the Great Lakes. I show that most of the productivity gains were due to changes in institutional rules, and most importantly in work rules, that governed how production took place. * I thank Ben Bridgman and Sanghoon Lee for excellent research assistance. A large number of people associated with the U.S. and Canadian iron-ore industries have provided help and I thank them: Tom Blaise of Statistics Canada; Bruce Boyd, at Natural Resources Canada; Bob Bratulich, district representative for the USW; Wayne Dalke, general manager at Minntac during the middle 1980s; Ann Glumac, past president of the Iron Mining Association of Minnesota; Peter Kakela, the leading industry expert on the North American iron-ore industry; William Kirk at USGS; Jared Meyer, who worked at USX headquarters in Pittsburgh and was involved with writing Appendix W of the USW-Minntac BLA; Joe Samargia, president of the USW local at Minntac in the late 1970s; Jim Swearingen, current general manager at Minntac; special thanks to Dave Foster, Disrtict USW Director, who provided me with a large set of mine contracts. A very large number of colleagues have provided help and encouragement; I thank the editor Fernando Alvarez and three referees for truly outstanding referee services. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.
In Defence Of A Näıve Conditional Epistemology Draft : 20 / 06 / 2012 , Updated : 13 / 05 / 2013

Numerous triviality results have been directed at a collection of views that tie the probability of a conditional sentence to the conditional probability of the consequent on its antecedent. In this paper I argue that this identification makes little sense if conditional sentences are context sensitive. The best alternative, I argue, is a version of the thesis which states that if your total evidence is E then the evidential probability of a conditional evaluated in a context where E is salient is the probability of the consequent given the antecedent. The biggest challenge to this thesis comes from the ‘static’ triviality arguments developed by Stalnaker, and Hajek and Hall. It is argued that these arguments rely on invalid principles of conditional logic and that the thesis is consistent with a reasonably strong logic that does not include the principles in question. Imagine that a coin has been selected at random from a bag containing three 20p coins, five 5p coins, six 1p coins, and four 2p coins. Given that no coin has a better chance of being selected than any other, what is the probability that (i) The selected coin is 5p if it’s silver? (ii) The selected coin is 20p if it’s silver? (iii) The selected coin is 1p if it’s copper? (iv) The selected coin is 2p if it’s copper? Intuitively the answer to these questions are: (i) 57 (ii) 3 7 (iii) 6 10 and (iv) 4 10 . For example, to work out (i), i.e. to calculate the probability that if the coin is silver it’s 5p, we consider the proportion of silver coins which are 5p coins. Since five out of seven silver coins are 5p coins we conclude that 57 is the answer to (i). This simple account cannot be the whole story. For example not only does the answer to questions (i-iv) depend on what your evidence is, but sometimes which question is being asked depends on your evidence; indicative conditionals are notoriously context sensitive. 1For those not familiar with British currency the first two kinds of coins are silver coloured while the latter two are copper coloured.
Myristoylated p110α Causes Embryonic Death Due to Developmental and Vascular Defects

Abstract The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway regulates many important cellular functions. The functional impact of deregulating the PIK3CA gene, encoding the p110α catalytic subunit of PI3K, is validated by frequent gain of function mutations in a range of human cancers. We generated a mouse model with an inducible constitutively active form of PI3K. In this model Cre recombinase activates expression of a myristoylated form of p110α (myr-p110α). The myristoylated version of p110α brings the protein to the cytoplasmic side of the cell membrane, which mimics the normal activation mechanism for the p110α catalytic subunit and activates the PI3K enzyme. Constitutively activated PI3K signaling induced by myr-p110α in all cells of the developing mouse caused lethality during embryonic development. Transgenic Cre;myr-p110α heterozygous embryos displayed morphological malformation and poor vascular development with extremely dilated blood vessels and hemorrhage in the embryo and the extraembryonic yolk sac. Previous studies demonstrated that loss of p110α during embryonic development causes angiogenic disruption and here we show that constitutive activation of p110α by gain of function mutation during development also disrupts vasculogenesis/angiogenesis in what appears to be a similar manner. These finding demonstrate the importance of tight regulation of PI3K signaling during embryonic vasculogenesis/angiogenesis.
Distributed LMMSE Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

An energy-efficient distributed detection method for wireless sensor networks is considered in this paper. It is assumed that a group of sensors observe the same quantity in independent additive observation noises with possibly different variances. We assume that the links between the nodes and the fusion center are subject to Rayleigh fading wireless channels. At the fusion center, incorporating the effect of fading in the detection process, a decision fusion rule based on the linear minimum mean square error(LMMSE) is investigated. In this paper, two types of constraints are considered: 1) transmission power constraints at the nodes, and 2) the communication channel between the nodes and the decision center. we propose a optimal distributed estimation algorithm in energy-constrained wireless sensor networks. By numerical examples, we illustrate the performance of the proposed serial detection scheme.
Surrogate-based test for Granger causality

An approach for testing the presence of Granger causality between two time series is proposed. The residue of the destination signal after self-prediction is computed, after which a cross-prediction of the source signal over this residue is examined. In the absence of causality, there should be no cross-predictive power, due to which the performance of the cross-prediction system can be used as an indication of causality. The proposed approach uses the surrogate data method, and implements the self- and cross-prediction systems as feedforward neural networks. It is tested on synthetic examples, and a sensitivity analysis demonstrates the robustness of the approach.
Parent-to-Parent Peer Support and Family Quality of Life

Parent-to-Parent Peer Support and Family Quality of Life Holly Ann Patton Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Carol Ann Davis College of Education This study utilized the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale (FQOLS) to explore the impact of parent-to-parent peer support and demographic characteristics on family quality of life (FQOL) ratings, and expanded the scope of the instrument to include adults. Data analysis provided descriptive statistics for respondent demographics as well as each FQOLS item and domain. Independent-sample t-tests were used to determine whether a difference existed between sample means of respondents who participated in parent-peer mentoring programs and those who did not. The majority of participants indicated feeling neutral to satisfied with their overall FQOL. Families who participated in parent-to-parent peer mentoring programs indicated increased FQOL ratings, but none reached significance. Future implications for development of support models supporting FQOL is discussed.
Adding Music to a Vowel Contrast Can the learning of an unknown vowel contrast benefit from the addition of musical features to a distributional learning task ?

In this thesis I investigated whether the addition of musical features to a distributional learning task can help the learning of an unknown vowel contrast. 40 participants were presented with a bimodal distribution of /ɞ/ and /ɜ/. They were divided in two groups, one of which listened to the vowels in a speech-like condition, in which the vowels were presented on intonation contours; the other group listened to the vowels in a music-like condition, in which the vowels were presented on melodies. Both groups were then tested on their ability to discriminate /ɞ/ and /ɜ/, through an AXB task. A comparison of the means of the two groups showed no significance difference, meaning that it cannot be confirmed that the addition of musical features facilitates the learning of a non-native vowel contrast. However, it might be the case that no difference was found because of differences in the training in the two conditions. The non-effect could also have been caused by the attention task that was carried out during the training, which might have led the participants to focus so much on the counting task that they failed to notice the target vowels. In addition, the participants' musicality was tested, by means of a shortened version of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), to investigate whether there would be an interaction of the MBEA score and the condition. This interaction was not found, nor was there a main effect of the MBEA score on the AXB score. This might have been due to the possibility that the MBEA did not correctly measure the participants' musicality, since there was a negative correlation of the MBEA score and the self-reported musicality.
“ Georgia Computes ! ” : Improving the Entire Computing Education Pipeline

Computing education suffers from low enrollment and a lack of diversity. Both of these problems require changes across the entire computing education pipeline. The “Georgia Computes! ” alliance, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing program, seeks to improve the entire computing education pipeline in the state of Georgia. We are having a measurable effect at each stage of the pipeline, but have not yet shown an impact across the whole pipeline.
Smart answering Chatbot based on OCR and Overgenerating Transformations and Ranking

With rapid development of information and communication technology, people are very diverse in education, learning style, and knowledge improvement methods. This paper presents an approach of converting documents into knowledge of Chatbot system that enables users to make more benefits of it by asking and answering questions through the use of electronic documents integrated with simulate system. It is an integrated system for enrich contents of documents from popular format such as Portable Document Format (PDF) and digital photos. The workflow of this system is started from extracts texts using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) from files, then generates questions via Overgenerating Transformations and Ranking algorithm, and finally let Chatbot response to the user's question when it is matched with the String pattern.
Disruption of heart sarcoglycan complex and severe cardiomyopathy caused by β sarcoglycan mutations

Two young males with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) resulting from sarcoglycan deficiency died at 27 (patient 1) and 18 years (patient 2) of severe cardiomyopathy. Genetic analysis showed that they were compound heterozygotes for mutations in the β sarcoglycan gene. One of these mutations, an 8 bp duplication in exon 3, was common to both patients. The second mutation in patient 2 was a 4 bp deletion at the splice donor site of intron 2, not reported previously. Patient 2 had more severe heart and skeletal muscle defects with faster deterioration; no sarcoglycans were detected in his skeletal muscle. The second mutation in patient 1, inferred because the unaffected father carries the 8 bp duplication, was not found. In patient 1, both heart and skeletal muscle were analysed and showed reduction of all sarcoglycans in both tissues and incorrect localisation of α and γ sarcoglycans in heart. Therefore mutations in one sarcoglycan gene can disrupt the entire sarcoglycan complex in both skeletal and cardiac muscle. Differing expression patterns of sarcoglycan components in heart and skeletal muscle could be the result of alternatively spliced transcripts in these tissues. By sequencing an alternative transcript, highly expressed in the heart and skeletal muscle of patient 1, we found an 87 bp cryptic exon not previously reported. Although cardiomyopathy can result from mutations in α and γ sarcoglycans, we show for the first time that the condition can also be caused by mutations in the β sarcoglycan gene. This report therefore expands the phenotype of sarcoglycanopathies and suggests that cardiac function in LGMD patients with defective sarcoglycan expression should be monitored.
Low resolution character recognition by dual eigenspace and synthetic degraded patterns

As the rapid progress of digital imaging technology, the requirements of character recognition for text embedded in image increase dramatically. Many image text characters are in low resolution with heavy degradation. Traditional OCR methods don't have good recognition performance on these degraded images due to poor binarization. In this paper, a novel feature extraction method based on dual eigenspace and synthetic pattern generation is proposed to recognize character images under low resolution. A subpixel grayscale normalization method is first used to normalize the low resolution character images. The dual eigenspace performs classification from coarse to fine. The multi-templates generated from the synthetic patterns provide good robustness against real degradation. Experimental results indicate that our method is very effective on low resolution Japanese character images.