Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards An Auditing Language for Preventing Cascading Failures

Today’s cloud services heavily rely on replication techniques to ensure reliability. As the underlying structures of cloud services become complex, infrastructure components may unwittingly share deep dependencies. These unexpected common dependencies’ faults may result in cascading failures across the entire replication deployments, undermining the reliability enhancement efforts [15, 9, 10, 16]. In a recent Rackspace outage event [3], for example, the glitches on a core switch and its backup switch in the Rackspace cloud caused multiple servers to be unaccessible, thus blocking customers from accessing their data in Rackspace. A survey conducted by Gunawi et al. [10] based on 500+ realworld cloud outage reports revealed that cascading failures resulting from only a small set of network-component faults (called network weak spots) are the second most common type of cloud outages. Moreover, Dan Geer, a computer risk management specialist, pointed out “A more insidious source of common-mode failures is a design fault, e.g., a killer bug, that causes redundant copies of the same software process to fail under identical conditions. ” [8]. For example, in an Amazon AWS report [1], a killer bug on one Amazon EBS data collector caused cascading failures across Relational Database Storage (RDS) and its backups, affecting the entire Availability Zone. There have been many diagnostic and forensic efforts proposed to localize the root causes of network problems [6, 11, 13] or software problems [5] after service outages occur. However, these post-failure forensics require significant human interventions, and in the face of structurally complex services, this leads to excessively prolonged failure recovery time [14]. Therefore, a natural question is: rather than trying to detect the root cause of a failure after it happens, can we prevent cascading failures before they occur?
Reason's Dark Champions: Constructive Strategies of Sophistic Argument

This is a complex and complete picture of the theory, practice, and reception of Sophistic argument. Recent decades have witnessed a major restoration of the Sophists' reputation, revising the Platonic and Aristotelian 'orthodoxies' that have dominated the tradition. Still lacking is a full appraisal of the Sophists' strategies of argumentation. Christopher W. Tindale corrects that omission in "Reason's Dark Champions". Viewing the Sophists as a group linked by shared strategies rather than by common epistemological beliefs, Tindale illustrates that the Sophists engaged in a range of argumentative practices in manners wholly different from the principal ways in which Plato and Aristotle employed reason. By examining extant fifth-century texts and the ways in which Sophistic reasoning is mirrored by historians, playwrights, and philosophers of the classical world, Tindale builds a robust understanding of Sophistic argument with relevance to contemporary studies of rhetoric and communication. Beginning with the reception of the Sophists in their own culture, Tindale explores depictions of the Sophists in Plato's dialogues and the argumentative strategies attributed to them as a means of understanding the threat Sophism posed to Platonic philosophical ambitions of truth seeking. He also considers the nature of the 'sophistical refutation' and its place in the tradition of fallacy. Tindale then turns to textual examples of specific argumentative practices, mapping how Sophists employed the argument from likelihood, reversal arguments, arguments on each side of a position, and commonplace reasoning. What emerges is a complex reappraisal of Sophism that reorients criticism of this mode of argumentation, expands understanding of Sophistic contributions to classical rhetoric, and opens avenues for further scholarship.
Antithrombotic therapy in aortic diseases: A narrative review

Aortic diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders, including atherothrombotic conditions like aortic atheroma, cholesterol embolization syndrome, aortic mural thrombus, thrombus within an aneurysm, and large vessel vasculitis. In this review, we provide a summary of the current evidence regarding atherothrombotic diseases of the aorta, focusing on therapeutic avenues. In patients with previous stroke, aortic arch atheroma is recognized as a strong predictor of recurrent atheroembolism, and antiplatelet therapy alone is still associated with a high (11.1%) residual risk of recurrent stroke. In secondary prevention, the use of dual antiplatelet therapy or moderate intensity anticoagulation with warfarin may lower the risk of recurrent stroke at a cost of increased life-threatening bleeding. Thrombi adherent to the aortic wall are generally associated with underlying atherosclerosis or aneurysmal disease. Primary aortic mural thrombus is a rare condition, sometimes related with systemic prothrombotic or inflammatory diseases. Retrospective studies suggest that anticoagulation is beneficial in patients with mobile mural thrombus. The pathogenesis and consequences of thrombus in an aortic aneurysm, or in an endograft following endovascular aneurysm repair, have been studied, but the role of antiplatelet therapy in those two conditions is still unclear and should be driven by general cardiovascular risk prevention. The benefit of anticoagulation to reduce thrombus load is uncertain. Patients with large vessel vasculitis experience increased cardiovascular events secondary to inflammation-driven atherothrombotic processes. Antiplatelet therapy is recommended as part of the therapy for prevention of cardiovascular disease. Anticoagulation with warfarin has shown limited benefit in few retrospective studies.
IDENTIFICATION OF A NOVEL CELL TYPE IN PERIPHERAL LYMPHOID ORGANS OF MICE

A novel cell type has been identified in adherent cell populations prepared from mouse peripheral lymphoid organs (spleen, lymph node, Peyer's patch). Though present in small numbers (0.1–1.6% of the total nucleated cells) the cells have distinct morphological features. The nucleus is large, retractile, contorted in shape, and contains small nucleoli (usually two). The abundant cytoplasm is arranged in processes of varying length and width and contains many large spherical mitochondria. In the living state, the cells undergo characteristic movements, and unlike macrophages, do not appear to engage in active endocytosis. The term, dendritic cell, is proposed for this novel cell type.
Amélioration des techniques de génération de maillages 3D des structures anatomiques humaines pour la méthode des éléments finis

La Methode des Elements Finis (MEF) est probablement la technique la plus utilisee pour la modelisation du comportement mecanique des solides. Elle s'appuie pour cela sur une discretisations du domaine modelise en elements geometrique simples. Cette partition porte le nom de maillage. La solution numerique calculee par la MEF depend directement du maillage utilise. Dans le domaine medical, les solides modelises sont de geometrie complexe. De ce fait, nous privilegions une generation de maillage par recalage elastique. Cette methode permet d'adapter un maillage predefini (atlas) aux donnees du patient afin de representer le domaine a modeliser. Le recalage elastique applique un deplacement aux sommets de l'atlas sans en changer sa topologie. Les methodes de recalage elastique ne prennent cependant pas en consideration les elements, par consequent il est possible de produire des elements invalides et de mauvaise qualite. Cette these presente une methode de reparation des elements apres application d'un recalage elastique. Les methodes de recalage elastique peuvent etre limitees lorsque, pour une region specifique du domaine modelise, une discretisation plus fine est requise alors qu'elle ne figure pas dans le maillage atlas. Par exemple dans le domaine de la neurochirurgie, un maillage d'une densite plus importante peut etre necessaire dans la region de la voie d'abord, entre la craniotomie et la tumeur car dans cette region d'interet une precision accrue de la simulation est requise. Nous proposons dans cette these une methode de generation de maillage comportant un raffinement local. Cette methode est appliquee a la neurochirurgie.
The Stock of Invasive Insect Species and Its Economic Determinants

ABSTRACT Invasions of nonindigenous organisms have long been linked to trade, but the contribution of individual trade pathways remains poorly understood, because species are not observed immediately upon arrival and the number of species arriving annually is unknown. Species interception records may count both new arrivals and species long introduced. Furthermore, the stock of invasive insect species already present is unknown. In this study, a state-space model is used to infer the stock of detected as well as undetected invasive insect species established in the United States. A system of equations is estimated jointly to distinguish the patterns of introduction, identification, and eradication. Introductions of invasive species are modeled as dependent on the volume of trade and arrival of people. Identifications depend on the public efforts at invasive species research, as well as on the established stock of invasive species that remain undetected. Eradications of both detected and undetected invasive species depend on containment and quarantine efforts, as well as on the stock of all established invasive species. These patterns are estimated by fitting the predicted number of invasive species detections to the observed record in the North American Non-Indigenous Arthropod Database. The results indicate that agricultural imports are the most important pathway of introduction, followed by immigration of people. Expenditures by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Service are found to explain the species identification record well. Between three and 38 invasive insect species are estimated to be established in the United States undetected.
Push-based reactive layer activation in context-oriented programming

There are context-dependent behaviors that are active only when a certain condition holds, and that require a certain transition process before activation. We propose a layer-activation mechanism of context-oriented programming languages for such context-dependent behaviors. Our mechanism supports the implicit layer activation (as opposed to the event-based layer activation) in a sense that a condition of activation is written as a conditional expression over reactive values (e.g., values obtained from sensors). In addition, it is push-based in a sense that it executes the transition process immediately after the condition becomes valid (as opposed to the mechanisms that defer the transition process until the first execution of a context-dependent behavior). In this paper, we present how this mechanism works in an extension of ServalCJ with push-based reactive values, and identify open issues raised by this proposal.
Internal Control Weaknesses in the Market for Corporate Control: Disclosure vs. Propensity

This paper examines how SOX 302/404 disclosures on the internal control environment affect the market for corporate control. Using a sample of (1) acquisitions that involve acquirers or targets that disclosed internal control weaknesses (ICWs) and matched control samples of (2) acquisitions that do not involve ICW disclosures, we document that ICW-acquirers earn smaller cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) while ICW-targets receive higher CARs than their non-ICW matches around the announcement dates. We also find evidence that acquirers with ICWs pay larger acquisition premia to targets, but targets with ICWs receive smaller acquisition premia. Larger premia are also paid by acquirers with high propensity scores for ICWs (but without ICW disclosures), suggesting that higher premia are a behavioral consequence of firm characteristics. Acquisitions are likely to be motivated by empire-building by hubristic management. Overall, our results suggest that SOX disclosures on internal controls provide incremental information in evaluating firm value.
Studies of active and passive immunity in animals inoculated with Toxoplasma gondii.

It has been shown that cytoplasm-modifying antibodies as demonstrated by the Sabin–Feldman dye test were elicited in the guinea pig after inoculation of phenol-killed toxoplasma organisms and that the addition of an adjuvant to the suspension induced immunity to reinfection in the animals. Protection from reinfection was also provided by recovery from laboratory-induced infection.Passive immunity studies were conducted using pooled antiserum from actively immunized guinea pigs. A slight increase in average survival time was shown in mice when the sera were used. The exception was in the case of serum from guinea pigs injected with an aqueous suspension of phenol-killed organisms. When "accessory factor" was incorporated with these antisera there was an additional increase in survival time in mice, but this increase was not statistically significant in every case.It was shown that neither vaccination nor recovery from experimental infection, even in the presence of very high titers of dye test antibodies, .
Improved AOW clustering algorithms for wireless self-organized network and performance analysis

In wireless self-organized network (WSON), AOW clustering algorithms can achieve better performance and high adaptability, but having limitations in certain circumstances. In this paper, working procedure and shortcomings of AOW are introduced and analyzed firstly. Then, several modified algorithms based on AOW are designed according to system requirements. Simulation experiments are conducted to compare modified algorithms and original AOW algorithm and simulation results show modified algorithms can improve overall performance of clustering network further in specific scenarios.
Agriculture’s inter-industry linkages, aggregation bias and rural policy reforms

As agricultural policy reform and its effects have become increasingly territorialised, analyses which attempt to explain or predict impacts need to be more localised but also identify spillover effects. In addition to the predictions of policy shocks predicted by sectoral partial equilibrium models, local and regional general equilibrium approaches which establish the wider effects of such policy shocks have become popular. However, these neglect a major, underexplored difficulty: agriculture is usually described as a single sector in input-output accounts, whereas policy shocks with differential impacts have effects on other industries which are different to those implied by average input-output coefficients. Regionalisation of aggregated input-output tables adds further to these difficulties. The objective of this paper is to develop a relatively simple method for dealing with these problems. It establishes the theoretical basis for aggregation bias and shows how it can be measured, in two contrasting case study regions in the United Kingdom and Sweden. Having established that this is a significant problem, a simple but effective procedure is demonstrated, based on additional information on variable costs, which transforms policy shocks from a direct change in agricultural output to that transmitted to the suppliers of inputs. This method provides an impact close to that which could be calculated if the general equilibrium system had indeed been disaggregated, and supports use of this approach in impact studies where the researcher does not have the time or funding available for completely disaggregating the agricultural sector’s regional accounts.
Observations on Enhancement & Inhibition by Light of Triphosphopyridine Nucleotide Photoreduction in Preparations of Laurencia obtusa (Hudson) Lam.

The alga, Laturencia obtutsa (Hudson) Lam. , was collected between 7 and 8 AM from an off-shore reef (Cayo Enrique) at La Parguera, Puerto Rico. All plants came from one location on the reef at ca. one foot depth. They were stored in open-sea water under daylight, and used within 6 hours of harvest. Terminal fronds of similar coloration from the same clump w-ere taken for each experiment. Several grams of the alga were ground with sand for 2 minutes in a chilled mortar and dispersed in twice the algal weight of tris-saline buffer (tris(hydroxymethyl) aminomethane, 0.02 M, pH 7.5, containing 0.35 M NaCl) (19). The brei was passed through 100 mesh nylon cloth and centrifuged one minute at 200 X g. The supernatant layer was used immediately as the plastid suspension. Reaction mixtures contained: tris, pH 7.8, 80 jmoles; MgCl,, 4 /Lmoles; KH2PO4-K,HPO4, pH 7.8, 4 /Amoles; ADP, 2 umoles; TPN, 1.5 ,Amoles; 0.2 ml of the plastid preparation and water to make a total volume of 3.0 ml. [The addition of either 0.01, 0.1, or 0.5 unit photosynthetic pyridine nucleotide reductase, prepared according to San Pietro (15) had no effect
A Longitudinal Examination of the Effects of Early Influences and Midlife Characteristics on Successful Aging.

OBJECTIVES Previous research revealed that successful aging includes both objective and subjective dimensions. This longitudinal analysis examines how early life influences and midlife characteristics predict stability and change in successful aging over a 4-year period. METHOD Data from 3,379 people living in New Jersey who completed baseline telephone interviews between 2006 and 2008 and follow-up mail surveys in 2011 were analyzed. Latent profile analysis identified people who aged successfully according to both objective and subjective criteria, neither criteria, and one, but not the other criteria. Multinomial logistic regressions analyses focused on the 2,614 people who were successful according to both objective and subjective criteria at baseline. RESULTS At follow-up, 18.1% people successful at baseline had transitioned out of that status. Characteristics identifiable early in life (gender, race, education, never marrying, incarceration) as well as midlife status (currently married, working), health behaviors (smoking, drinking, body mass index, exercise), and social support distinguished people who continued to age successfully 4 years later from those who did not. DISCUSSION Findings suggest that successful aging is a fluid construct and that although some characteristics identifiable early in life predict successful aging, others are dampened by midlife statuses.
Microdebates: Structuring debates without a structuring tool

Argumentative debates are a powerful tool for reaching agreements in open environments. However, in large scale settings, such as social networks, making sense of ongoing debates may be a compelling task, and debates risk to lose their effectiveness. We thus propose "microdebates" to help organizing and confronting users' opinions in an automated way.
Temporal Framing and Consideration of Future Consequences: Effects on Smokers’ and At-Risk Nonsmokers’ Responses to Cigarette Health Warnings

This research examines the influence of temporal framing (long-term vs. short-term) and individual difference in consideration of future consequences (CFC) on the effectiveness of cigarette health warnings among smokers and at-risk nonsmokers in a college population. An online experiment (N = 395) revealed a three-way interaction among temporal framing, CFC, and smoking status. The results among at-risk nonsmokers supported the temporal fit hypothesis—those high in CFC responded more favorably to long-term framing, whereas those low in CFC responded more positively to short-term framing. The findings among smokers revealed a different pattern in which short-term framing was more effective among high-CFC smokers, whereas among low-CFC smokers the framing effect was not distinct. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
Conception et utilisation d'ontologies pour l'indexation de documents audovisuels

L'indexation de documents audiovisuels est une tâche difficile mais necessaire si l'on veut rechercher correctement des contenus dans des bases volumineuses. Pour atteindre ses objectifs, un systeme d'indexation doit imposer un certain degre de controle, et assister ses utilisateurs tant pour la creation que pour la recherche des index. Dans ce manuscrit, nous discutons de la facon dont on peut concevoir des systemes d'indexation et de recherche a base de connaissances (SBC). En les adaptant aux pratiques de l'INA et aux besoins de projets experimentaux comme OPALES, nous reprenons les concepts et techniques de la representation des connaissances et du web semantique. Nous nous concentrons principalement sur les ontologies, modeles conceptuels formalises sur lesquels s'appuient les SBC pour le controle des descriptions et la conduite de raisonnements. Nous mettons en particulier en oeuvre une methode d'assistance a la conception des ontologies, et insistons sur l'interet d'utiliser des patrons de conception ontologiques. Dans nos reflexions figure aussi la notion de patrons d'indexation, structures relationnelles refletant les index typiques d'une application donnee. Les patrons d'indexation facilitent la creation des index, tout comme ils permettent de rationaliser la conception des ontologies, notamment celle des connaissances de raisonnement qui specifient les inferences realisees par le SBC. Nos propositions methodologiques ont ete appliquees dans un certain nombre de realisations informatiques et d'experimentations pour des domaines reels, que nous evoquons et discutons tout au long de ce manuscrit.
Molecular cloning and expression of a Relish gene in Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis

NF‐κB is a B‐cell specific transcription factor that plays crucial roles in inflammation, immunity, apoptosis, development and differentiation. In the present study, a novel NF‐κB‐like transcription factor Relish was cloned from Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis (designated as EsRelish) by rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) technique based on expressed sequence tag (EST). The full‐length cDNA of EsRelish was of 5034 bp, consisting of a 5′ untranslated region (UTR) of 57 bp, a 3′ UTR of 1335 bp with two mRNA instability motifs (ATTTA), a polyadenylation signal sequence (AATAAA) and a poly (A) tail, and an open reading frame (ORF) of 3645 bp encoding a polypeptide of 1214 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 134.8 kDa and a theoretical isoelectric point of 5.26. There were a typical Rel homology domain (RHD), two nuclear localization signal (NLS) sequences (KR), an inhibitor κB (IκB)‐like domain with six ankyrin repeats, a PEST region and a death domain in the deduced amino acid sequence of EsRelish. Conserved domain, higher similarity with other Rel/NF‐κBs and phylogenetic analysis suggested that EsRelish was a member of the NF‐κB family. Quantitative real‐time RT‐PCR was employed to detect the mRNA transcripts of EsRelish in different tissues and its temporal expression in hemocytes of E. sinensis challenged with Pichia methanolica and Listonella anguillarum. The EsRelish mRNA was found to be constitutively expressed in a wide range of tissues. It could be mainly detected in the hemocytes, gonad and hepatopancreas, and less degree in the gill, muscle and heart. The expression level of EsRelish mRNA in hemocytes was up‐regulated from at 3, 6, 9 and 12 h after P. methanolica challenge. In L. anguillarum challenge, it was up‐regulated at 9, 12 and 24 h. The results collectively indicated that EsRelish was potentially involved in the immune response against fungus and bacteria.