Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Guided Walk: A Scalable Recommendation Algorithm for Complex Heterogeneous Social Networks

Online social networks have become predominant in recent years and have grown to encompass massive scales of data. In addition to data scale, these networks can be heterogeneous and contain complex structures between different users, between social entities and various interactions between users and social entities. This is especially true in enterprise social networks where hierarchies explicitly exist between employees as well. In such networks, producing the best recommendations for each user is a very challenging problem for two main reasons. First, the complex structures in the social network need to be properly mined and exploited by the algorithm. Second, these networks contain millions or even billions of edges making the problem very difficult computationally. In this paper we present Guided Walk, a supervised graph based algorithm that learns the significance of different network links for each user and then produces entity recommendations based on this learning phase. We compare the algorithm with a set of baseline algorithms using offline evaluation techniques as well as a user survey. The offline results show that the algorithm outperforms the next best algorithm by a factor of 3.6. The user survey further confirms that the recommendation are not only relevant but also rank high in terms of personal relevance for each user. To deal with large scale social networks, the Guided Walk algorithm is formulated as a Pregel program which allows us to utilize the power of distributed parallel computing. This would allow horizontally scaling the algorithm for larger social networks by simply adding more compute nodes to the cluster.
A 90 nm Logic Technology Featuring 50 nm Strained Silicon Channel Transistors

A leading edge 90 nm technology with 1.2 nm physical gate oxide, 50 nm gate length, strained silicon, NiSi, 7 layers of Cu interconnects, and low k CDO for high performance dense logic is presented. Strained silicon is used to increase saturated NMOS and PMOS drive currents by 10-20% and mobility by > 50%. Aggressive design rules and unlanded contacts offer a 1.0 µ m 2 6-T SRAM cell using 193nm lithography.
Duration of Cognitive Impairment After Sports Concussion

OBJECTIVE:We sought to determine the duration of cognitive impairment after sports concussion. METHODS:We conducted a study with a prospective design in which 729 athletes underwent preseason baseline testing by being administered a computerized neuropsychological test battery, followed by retesting at regular intervals after they sustained sports-related concussions. A control group consisting of nonconcussed athletes drawn from the same baseline population underwent testing at parallel intervals. RESULTS:Cognitive impairment in this primarily American Academy of Neurology Grade II sample of boxing concussions was apparent on the day of injury and at 1 to 2 days postinjury. Recovery of cognitive performance occurred during the 3- to 7-day interval. Comparison with control subjects showed that absent or attenuated practice effects, in addition to frank deterioration from baseline, were indications of recent concussion. CONCLUSION:The present findings of recovery during the 3- to 7-day interval postinjury are consistent with the American Academy of Neurology Grade II return-to-play practice parameters suggesting a 1-week time-out from participation in contact sports.
Preservation of the Photoreceptor Inner/Outer Segment Junction in Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration Treated by Rheohemapheresis

Aim. To evaluate the long-term effect of rheohemapheresis (RHF) treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) on photoreceptor IS/OS junction status. Methods. In our study, we followed 24 patients with dry AMD and drusenoid retinal pigment epithelium detachment (DPED) for a period of more than 2.5 years. Twelve patients (22 eyes) were treated by RHF and 12 controls (18 eyes) were randomized. The treated group underwent 8 RHF standardized procedures. We evaluated best-corrected visual acuity, IS/OS junction status (SD OCT), and macular function (multifocal electroretinography) at baseline and at 2.5-year follow-up. Results. RHF caused a decrease of whole-blood viscosity/plasma viscosity at about 15/12%. BCVA of treated patients increased insignificantly (P = 0.187) from median 74.0 letters (56.2 to 81.3 letters) to median 79.0 letters (57.3 to 83.4 letters), but it decreased significantly from 74.0 letters (25.2 to 82.6 letters) to 72.5 letters (23.4 to 83.1 letters) in the control group (P = 0.041). The mfERG responses in the region of eccentricity between 1.8° and 7° were significantly higher in treated patients (P = 0.04). Conclusions. RHF contributed to sparing of photoreceptor IS/OS junction integrity in the fovea, which is assumed to be a predictive factor for preservation of visual acuity.
Performing software defined route-based IP spoofing filtering with SEFA

IP spoofing is a well-known security threat on the Internet. Though there have been a number of spoofing prevention mechanisms, due the diversity of networks and management objectives, the operators may prefer a framework which enables easy installation and modification of the IP spoofing prevention solution, rather than a single mechanism. In this article, a lightweight and efficient framework for route-based IP spoofing filtering, named SEFA, is proposed. Through providing a collective view of the network and decoupling the filtering rule generation from network devices, SEFA enables easily installation of spoofing filtering application. SEFA mainly resolves the challenge that how to build network abstraction without taking full controllability. SEFA has been implemented based on slightly modifying commercial routers and an open source controller. Based on experiments, SEFA is found to be able to reduce the overhead and the latency of filtering rule generation and installation, while keeping off the complexity and latency of generating forwarding rules by the controller.
The Effects of Enamel Anisotropy on the Distribution of Stress in a Tooth

Enamel is thought to have highly anisotropic stiffness characteristics, because of its prismatic structure. It is probable that the enamel is stiffer in the prism direction compared with a direction perpendicular to it. The prisms are thought to run approximately perpendicular to the enamel-dentin junction. The curvilinear anisotropy that will result can readily be modeled by TOMECH, a finite element program developed at the University of Sheffield, since curvilinearity of mechanical properties is available as an automated feature of this program. The patterns of stress due to an external load were investigated in two-dimensional abstract models, and in a model of a mandibular second premolar, for both anisotropic and isotropic enamel. Results were compared with the commercial code ANSYS and good agreement obtained. Enamel with anisotropic properties was found to have a profoundly different stress distribution under load when compared with models with isotropic enamel. For isotropic enamel, the load path is directed through the stiff enamel shell, while for anisotropic enamel, the load path is directed into the dentin, as the load path follows the stiff direction ofthe enamel prisms. Thus, if enamel is indeed anisotropic, its function differs greatly from that suggested in previous hypotheses. Enamel with anisotropic material characteristics would provide a hard-wearing protective surface-coating while simultaneously diverting the load away from this brittle, low-tensile-strength phase, thus reducing the potential for tooth fracture.
Television Goes Online: Myths and Realities in the Contemporary Context

New technologies impact industry and audiences, (re)opening a wide range of debates about costs, control, desire, culture, and strategic directions. Some polemicists have gone so far as to proclaim that new viewing platforms signal the death of TV, as public discourse is underlined by the assumption that television’s digital migration allows everyone to get what they want, when they want it, rendering traditional television irrelevant or redundant. Rather, it is important to critically assess such popular and tempting claims in order to provide a thoughtful and fair analysis of what might amount to popularly exchanged “myths. ” Underlying this analysis is the nagging insistence that television is, after all, an industry, located in historically and geographically specific capitalist and commercial contexts that structure both content and access. The article will highlight some of these issues in the Canadian context, which is often under-represented in global literature, despite the success of this industry (domestically and globally); as well as its economically strong and culturally uneasy relationship with the American television industry. Canada is instructive, then, not only as a national context, but also as a tool for thinking transnationally about online television, a move that may bring to crisis several popular myths and rearticulate the importance of considering television convergence, conglomeration and consolidation in the online television discussion.
Demonyms and Compound Relational Nouns in Nominal Open IE

Extracting open relational tuples that are mediated by nouns (instead of verbs) is important since titles and entity attributes are often expressed nominally. While appositives and possessives are easy to handle, a difficult and important class of nominal extractions requires interpreting compound noun phrases (e.g., “Google CEO Larry Page”). We substantially improve the quality of Open IE from compound noun phrases by focusing on phenomena like demonyms and compound relational nouns. We release RELNOUN 2.2, which obtains 3.5 times yield with over 15 point improvement in precision compared to RELNOUN 1.1, a publicly available nominal Open IE system.
Using HPX and OP2 for Improving Parallel Scaling Performance of Unstructured Grid Applications

Computer scientists and programmers face the difficultly of improving the scalability of their applications while using conventional programming techniques only. As a base-line hypothesis of this paper we assume that an advanced runtime system can be used to take full advantage of the available parallel resources of a machine in order to achieve the highest parallelism possible. In this paper we present the capabilities of HPX - a distributed runtime system for parallel applications of any scale - to achieve the best possible scalability through asynchronous task execution [1]. OP2 is an active library which provides a framework for the parallel execution for unstructured grid applications on different multi-core/many-core hardware architectures [2]. OP2 generates code which uses OpenMP for loop parallelization within an application code for both single-threaded and multi-threaded machines. In this work we modify the OP2 code generator to target HPX instead of OpenMP, i.e. port the parallel simulation backend of OP2 to utilize HPX. We compare the performance results of the different parallelization methods using HPX and OpenMP for loop parallelization within the Airfoil application. The results of strong scaling and weak scaling tests for the Airfoil application on one node with up to 32 threads are presented. Using HPX for parallelization of OP2 gives an improvement in performance by 5%-21%. By modifying the OP2 code generator to use HPX's parallel algorithms, we observe scaling improvements by about 5% as compared to OpenMP. To fully exploit the potential of HPX, we adapted the OP2 API to expose a future and dataflow based programming model and applied this technique for parallelizing the same Airfoil application. We show that the dataflow oriented programming model, which automatically creates an execution tree representing the algorithmic data dependencies of our application, improves the overall scaling results by about 21% compared to OpenMP. Our results show the advantage of using the asynchronous programming model implemented by HPX.
High-resolution microwave stroke detection system based on signal similarity algorithm

Microwave remote sensing is a good candidate to be used in a real-time, low-cost and portable brain stroke detection system for its non-invasive, non-ionizing and cost-effective characteristics. Due to the heterogeneous and sophisticated texture of brain tissue and low dielectric contrast of the stroke, the conventional stroke imaging methods face significant challenges to achieve satisfactory results. This research presents a schema of identification and localization the blood block in a brain based on the comparison of microwave signal similarity. A realistic head model and a numerical analysis technique based on finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) are adopted in the analysis. The simulation results show the schema has blood localization accuracy with resolution of 10-3m.
Cosmological Black Hole Spin Evolution by Mergers and Accretion

Using recent results from numerical relativity simulations of black hole mergers, we revisit previous studies of cosmological black hole spin evolution. We show that mergers are very unlikely to yield large spins, unless alignment of the spins of the merging holes with the orbital angular momentum is very efficient. We analyze the spin evolution in three specific scenarios: (1) spin evolves only through mergers, (2) spin evolves through mergers and prolonged accretion episodes, and (3) spin evolves through mergers and short-lived (chaotic) accretion episodes. We study how different diagnostics can distinguish between these evolutionary scenarios, assessing the discriminating power of gravitational-wave measurements and X-ray spectroscopy. Gravitational radiation can produce three different types of spin measurements, yielding, respectively, the spins of the two black holes in a binary inspiral prior to merger, the spin of the merger remnant (as encoded in the ring-down waves), and the spin of “single” black holes during the extreme mass-ratio inspiral (EMRI) of compact objects. The latter spin population is also accessible to iron-line measurements. We compute and compare the spin distributions relevant for these different observations. If iron-line measurements and gravitational-wave observations of EMRIs only yield dimensionless spins j = J/M2 > 0.9, then prolonged accretion should be responsible for spin-up, and chaotic accretion scenarios would be very unlikely. If only a fraction of the whole population of low-redshift black holes spins rapidly, spin-alignment during binary mergers (rather than prolonged accretion) could be responsible for spin-ups.
Performance analysis of an optimal internal congestion control in a cluster-based router

In this paper, we report a simulation study of the scalability and performance of an optimal utility-based congestion control for a cluster-based router composed of commodity processors connected by a high-speed InfiniBand network. This control is optimal in the sense that it maximizes the sum of the utilities over ingress rates subject to an egress capacity constraint. We validate our simulation results by comparing them to experimental results from a small-scale prototype, and to the results from a fluid-flow model. One of the key aspects tested is the behaviour of the router's internal congestion control as a function of router size and varying traffic patterns. Our results show that the optimal scheme provides much smoother and tighter control than an AIMD-based control, thus leading to significantly higher throughput and lower delays. Our results also show that the optimal control scales well to large numbers of interfaces, and reacts quickly to changes in the input traffic intensity and pattern.
Surgery-Induced Changes and Early Recovery of Hip-Muscle Strength, Leg-Press Power, and Functional Performance after Fast-Track Total Hip Arthroplasty: A Prospective Cohort Study

Background By measuring very early changes in muscle strength and functional performance after fast-track total hip arthroplasty (THA), post-operative rehabilitation, introduced soon after surgery, can be designed to specifically target identified deficits. Objective(s) Firstly, to quantify changes (compared to pre-operative values) in hip muscle strength, leg-press power, and functional performance in the first week after THA, and secondly, to explore relationships between the muscle strength changes, and changes in hip pain, systemic inflammation, and thigh swelling. Design Prospective, cohort study. Setting Convenience sample of patients receiving a THA at Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark, between March and December 2011. Participants Thirty-five patients (65.9±7.2 years) undergoing THA. Main outcome measures Hip muscle strength, leg-press power, performance-based function, and self-reported disability were determined prior to, and 2 and 8 days after, THA (Day 2 and 8, respectively). Hip pain, thigh swelling, and C-Reactive Protein were also determined. Results Five patients were lost to follow-up. Hip muscle strength and leg press power were substantially reduced at Day 2 (range of reductions: 41–58%, P<0.001), but less pronounced at Day 8 (range of reductions: 23–31%, P<0.017). Self-reported symptoms and function (HOOS: Pain, Symptoms, and ADL) improved at Day 8 (P<0.014). Changes in hip pain, C-Reactive Protein, and thigh swelling were not related to the muscle strength and power losses. Conclusion(s) Hip muscle strength and leg-press power decreased substantially in the first week after THA – especially at Day 2 – with some recovery at Day 8. The muscle strength loss and power loss were not related to changes in hip pain, systemic inflammation, or thigh swelling. In contrast, self-reported symptoms and function improved. These data on surgery-induced changes in muscle strength may help design impairment-directed, post-operative rehabilitation to be introduced soon after surgery. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01246674.
Task scheduling for mobile robots using interval algebra

We present a novel task scheduling algorithm for use on mobile robots in real environments. The scheduling problem is formalised as mixed integer program, which is a standard approach in the scheduling community. Our contribution is the use of Allen's interval algebra to prune the search to be performed by the mixed integer program. This significantly speeds up the algorithm. The proposed algorithm has been used on several mobile robots in long-term autonomy scenarios, where it schedules large sets containing a variety of tasks. The proposed algorithm outperforms the state of the art by at least one order of magnitude on both these real tasks and synthetic datasets.
Theory and measure in the psychological field: The case of attachment theory and the strange situation procedure

In this article, we pose a question about the link between theory and measure within the field of psychology and use an influential psychological theory—attachment theory—as a case study to test our question. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we incorporate broad historical, sociological, and philosophical perspectives to support our thesis that in today’s psychological field there is pressure to achieve instantaneous empirical answers to broad theoretical questions and without due awareness of this state of affairs, a confusion could occur between theoretical and empirical constructs. In our review of attachment theory, we look at the connection between the theory and the empirical definitions of the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) and conclude that the use of the terminology “gold standard” in relation to the SSP is an imprudent characterization of what is otherwise a robust measurement tool. We theorize that this type of terminology may result in overreliance on the measure instead of on the theory.
VEBO: Validation of E-R Diagrams through Ontologies and WordNet

In the semantic web vision, ontologies are building blocks for providing applications with a high level description of the operating environment in support of interoperability and semantic capabilities. The importance of ontologies in this respect is clearly stated in many works. Another crucial issue to increase the semantic aspect of web is to enrich the level of expressivity of database related data. Nowadays, databases are the primary source of information for dynamical web sites. The linguistic data used to build the database structure could be relevant for extracting meaningful information. In most cases, this type of information is not used for information retrieval. The work presented in this paper deals with an attempt to enrich a database structure using linguistic information. The purpose is twofold: the proposed approach can be used either to validate the database structure linguistically or at least to enrich information retrieval with structural information. In this paper the first goal is pursued by the construction of the VEBO system that is used to validate database entity-relation diagrams through semi-automatic creation and enrichment of ontology.
An Optimal Beamforming Strategy for Wide-Field Surveys With Phased-Array-Fed Reflector Antennas

An optimal beamforming strategy is proposed for performing large-field surveys with dual-polarized phased-array-fed reflector antennas. This strategy uses signal-processing algorithms that maximize the beam sensitivity and the continuity of a field of view (FOV) that is formed by multiple closely overlapping beams. A mathematical framework and a newly developed numerical approach are described to analyze and optimize a phased array feed (PAF) system. The modeling approach has been applied to an experimental PAF system (APERTIF prototype) that is installed on the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. The resulting beam shapes, sensitivity, and polarization diversity characteristics (such as the beam orthogonality and the intrinsic cross-polarization ratio) are examined over a large FOV and frequency bandwidth. We consider weighting schemes to achieve a conjugate-field matched situation (max. received power), maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and a reduced SNR scenario but with constraints on the beam shape. The latter improves the rotational symmetry of the beam and reduces the sensitivity ripple, at a modest maximum sensitivity penalty. The obtained numerical results demonstrate a very good agreement with the measurements performed at the telescope.
Fault Tolerant Teaching and Automated Knowledge Assessment

Distance education, reaching students through accessible, high quality, individualized instruction is a major challenge for today’s universities. Increased access to computers and the Internet has made this idea more feasible, but researchers are still working on the most effective ways to deliver individualized instruction in inexpensive, expandable ways. This paper explores the evolution of the promising field of fault tolerant teaching (FTT). When fully developed, fault tolerant teaching systems will automatically assess student knowledge and use this assessment to direct remediation of knowledge. FTT methods use statistical techniques to interpret student responses to questions, and are constructed to tolerate the usual errors that occur during testing – such as a student answering a question correctly without knowing how, or accidentally missing a question they understand well. These methods do not require any knowledge about the instructional topic. This paper presents the evolution of fault tolerant teaching and the promising results of an experiment to test FTT methods.