Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Workflow task clustering for best effort systems with Pegasus

Many scientific workflows are composed of fine computational granularity tasks, yet they are composed of thousands of them and are data intensive in nature, thus requiring resources such as the TeraGrid to execute efficiently. In order to improve the performance of such applications, we often employ task clustering techniques to increase the computational granularity of workflow tasks. The goal is to minimize the completion time of the workflow by reducing the impact of queue wait times. In this paper, we examine the performance impact of the clustering techniques using the Pegasus workflow management system. Experiments performed using an astronomy workflow on the NCSA TeraGrid cluster show that clustering can achieve a significant reduction in the workflow completion time (up to 97%).
An Immune System Approach to Scheduling in Changing Environments

This paper describes the application of an artificial immune system, (AIS), model to a scheduling application, in which sudden changes in the scheduling environment require the rapid production of new schedules. The model operates in two phases: In the first phase of the system, the immune system analogy, in conjunction with a genetic algorithm, (GA), is used to detect common patterns amongst scheduling sequences frequently used by a factory. In phase II, some of the combinatoric features of the natural immune system are modelled in order to use the detected patterns to produce new schedules, either from scratch or starting from a partially completed schedule. The results are compared to those calculated using an exhaustive search procedure to generate patterns. The AIS/GA analogy appears to be extremely promising, in that schedules corresponding to situations previously encountered can easily be reconstructed, and also in that the patterns are shown to incorporate sufficient information to potentially construct schedules for previously unencountered situations.
Self-reconfigurable molecule robots as 3D metamorphic robots

This paper describes a three-dimensional self-reconfiguring system that is capable of reconfiguration and the associated planning in polynomial time. The approach is to reduce a system composed of molecule robots to metamorphic robots. Having done so, we are able to apply polynomial-time planning algorithms that have previously been used only in two-dimensional systems.
An in Vitro Comparison of Bonding Effectiveness of Different Adhesive Strategies on Erbium:Yttrium-Alluminum-Garnet Laser Irradiated Dentin

Background: To date there is not a material considered ideal for the lased dentin. Objective: To compare the bond strength to human lased dentin of self-etch and etch-and-rinse adhesive systems, a self-adhesive resin composite and a glass-ionomer cement. Methods: Forty human molars were sectioned to obtain a 2 mm-thick slab of mid-coronal dentin. The occlusal surface of each slab was polished by SiC paper (P600) for 10 s. Then an half part of dentin slabs was randomly selected for receiving treatment with 2.94 μm Er:YAG laser (DEKA, Smart 2940D Plus) with 10 Hz at 100 mJ, pulse duration of 230 μs with contact tip. Dentin slabs were randomly divided into four groups (n = 10). Six conical frustum-shaped build-ups were constructed on the occlusal surface of each dentin slab using bonding agents (OptiBond Solo Plus Group 1; OptiBond All-in-one Group 2) combined with a resin composite (Premise Flow), self-adhesive resin composites (Vertise Flow Group 3) and a glass-ionomer cement (Ketac-Fil Group 4). Specimens were subjected to μSBS test. Data were analyzed by a mixed model and Tukey’s test. Results: Measured bond strengths were (mean ± standard deviation): 20.8 ± 5.5 MPa (laser treatment) and 15.6 ± 4.5 MPa (SiC paper) for Group 1, 18.9 ± 5.3 MPa (laser treatment) and 14.0 ± 4.3 MPa (SiC paper) for Group 2, 7.9 ± 2.8 MPa (laser treatment) and 4.3 ± 2.2 MPa (SiC paper) for Group 3, 4.7 ± 1.9 MPa (laser treatment) and 2.6 ± 1.2 MPa (SiC paper) for Group 4. The inferential analysis showed that the dentin laser treatment significantly affected the bond strength within each individual group. On dentin treated with laser the bond strengths recorded for build-ups constructed with etch and rinse and self-etch adhesive systems were significantly higher than those recorded for build-ups constructed with self-adhesive resin composite and glass-ionomer cement (p < 0.0001). Similarly, on dentin treated with SiC paper the bond strengths recorded for build-ups constructed with etch and rinse and self-etch adhesive systems were significantly higher than those recorded for build-ups constructed with self-adhesive resin composite and glass-ionomer cement (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Er:YAG laser treatment has increased the shear bond strength of all the adhesive materials used.
Subcutaneous insulin‐like growth factor‐1 treatment in spinocerebellar ataxias: An open label clinical trial

Movement disorders may result from autoimmune damage of the central nervous system. Examples include Sydenham’s chorea and paraneoplastic encephalitis. Recently Dalmau et al. identified a new type of encephalitis, mostly in young women and children, exhibiting dyskinesias, psychiatric disturbances, autonomic instability, and seizures. There is increasing evidence that this disorder is mediated by circulating antibodies against NR1/NR2 heteromers of the Nmethyl-D-aspartate-glutamic-receptors (NMDAR). Exceptionally, patients with NMDAR encephalitis may not develop the full spectrum of symptoms. Here we report a patient with isolated subacute hemidystonia associated with NMDAR antibodies.
Use of Textile Friction to Mimic Hill's Model in Dynamic Contraction of Braided Artificial Muscles

Several types of artificial muscles are actually able to mimic the active spring-like behaviour characterizing the tension-length diagram of the skeletal muscle but the natural damping expressed by the typical tension-velocity Hill’s relationship is not so easy to integrate in a simple way into the artificial muscle functioning. We discussed the use of a textile braided sheath, particularly in the case of the so-called McKibben structure to obtain a Hill’s model-like dynamic behaviour of the artificial muscle. Experiments are reported to compare “quick-release” experiments – as defined in muscular physiology – between artificial muscles whose braided weave is made of metallic strands and of rayon textile strands. It is shown that only in the second case a typical hyperbolic tension-velocity is highlighted with a curvature close to this of human skeletal muscle. It is also shown how the typical laws of friction in textile can explain this analogical behaviour with the Hill’s-model interpreted as a force model including a typical non-linear viscous component. An original interpretation of Hill’s model in terms of natural load-variations adaptation is given and so the advantage for an artificial muscle to get this biomimetic character.
Drizzle: Fast and Adaptable Stream Processing at Scale

Large scale streaming systems aim to provide high throughput and low latency. They are often used to run mission-critical applications, and must be available 24x7. Thus such systems need to adapt to failures and inherent changes in workloads, with minimal impact on latency and throughput. Unfortunately, existing solutions require operators to choose between achieving low latency during normal operation and incurring minimal impact during adaptation. Continuous operator streaming systems, such as Naiad and Flink, provide low latency during normal execution but incur high overheads during adaptation (e.g., recovery), while micro-batch systems, such as Spark Streaming and FlumeJava, adapt rapidly at the cost of high latency during normal operations. Our key observation is that while streaming workloads require millisecond-level processing, workload and cluster properties change less frequently. Based on this, we develop Drizzle, a system that decouples the processing interval from the coordination interval used for fault tolerance and adaptability. Our experiments on a 128 node EC2 cluster show that on the Yahoo Streaming Benchmark, Drizzle can achieve end-to-end record processing latencies of less than 100ms and can get 2-3x lower latency than Spark. Drizzle also exhibits better adaptability, and can recover from failures 4x faster than Flink while having up to 13x lower latency during recovery.
Sampling quantization analysis and results for FMCW SAR

One of the advantages of Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radars is the relative low required sampling frequency even when transmitting high bandwidths. This is a consequence of the inherent homodyne configuration of the radar front-end. A simple way to reduce further the data rate is to use few bits per sample. The paper analyzes the effects of low bit sampling in FMCW Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. A low number of bits used to sample the FMCW deramped signal could produces spurious peaks and intermodulation products of the sinusoidal signal. However, it is shown in the paper that, for typical value of signal to noise ratio in FMCW systems, white noise suppresses the spurious products. Simulation results and verifications on real data collected with the FMCW SAR system built at the Delft University of Technology are presented.
Joint learning of representations of medical concepts and words from EHR data

There has been an increasing interest in learning low-dimensional vector representations of medical concepts from electronic health records (EHRs). While EHRs contain structured data such as diagnostic codes and laboratory tests, they also contain unstructured clinical notes, which provide more nuanced details on a patient's health status. In this work, we propose a method that jointly learns medical concept and word representations. In particular, we focus on capturing the relationship between medical codes and words by using a novel learning scheme for word2vec model. Our method exploits relationships between different parts of EHRs in the same visit and embeds both codes and words in the same continuous vector space. In the end, we are able to derive clusters which reflect distinct disease and treatment patterns. In our experiments, we qualitatively show how our methods of grouping words for given diagnostic codes compares with a topic modeling approach. We also test how well our representations can be used to predict disease patterns of the next visit. The results show that our approach outperforms several common methods.
Airborne particles are a risk factor for hospital admissions for heart and lung disease.

We examined the association between particulate matter [less than/equal to] 10 microm; (PM(10)) and hospital admission for heart and lung disease in ten U.S. cities. Our three goals were to determine whether there was an association, to estimate how the association was distributed across various lags between exposure and response, and to examine socioeconomic factors and copollutants as effect modifiers and confounders. We fit a Poisson regression model in each city to allow for city-specific differences and then combined the city-specific results. We examined potential confounding by a meta-regression of the city-specific results. Using a model that considered simultaneously the effects of PM(10) up to lags of 5 days, we found a 2.5% [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.8-3. 3] increase in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a 1.95% (CI, 1. 5-2.4) increase in pneumonia, and a 1.27% increase (CI, 1-1.5) in CVD for a 10 microg/m(3) increase in PM(10). We found similar effect estimates using the mean of PM(10) on the same and previous day, but lower estimates using only PM(10) for a single day. When using only days with PM(10) < 50 mg/m(3), the effect size increased by [greater/equal to] 20% for all three outcomes. These effects are not modified by poverty rates or minority status. The results were stable when controlling for confounding by sulfur dioxide, ozone, and carbon monoxide. These results are consistent with previous epidemiology and recent mechanistic studies in animals and humans.
Poly(bisphenol A-co-epichlorohydrin) and Nanodiamonds/Poly(azo-pyridine)/Polyamide/Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube-based Nanofiber Nanocomposites

Polyamide was grafted on multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) to produce MWCNT-PA using γ-Phenyl-e-caprolactone via in-situ polymerization. For the preparation of nanofiber poly(azo-pyridine) (PAP) was also synthesized in this work. MWCNT-PA was then electrospun with PAP and nanodiamond (ND) to yield two types of nanofiber i.e. ND/PAP/MWCNT/PA and PAP/MWCNT/PA nanofibers. Subsequently, poly(bisphenol A-co-epichlorohydrin) (PBAE) was reinforced with electrospun nanofiber to form two types of nanocomposites, with and with out nanodiamond. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy showed that the nanofiber was evenly coated with the epoxy having spherical beads due to agglomeration of matrix at certain places. Tensile studies depicted higher tensile stress value 330.3-341.3 MPa for ND/PAP/MWCNT/PA/PBAE nanocomposite compared with PAP/MWCNT/PA/PBAE nanocomposites without nanodiamonds i.e. 288.1-299.9 MPa. Thermal stability of ND/PAP/MWCNT/PA nanofiber reinforced epoxy was significantly higher T 10 536-546 oC and T g 301-311 oC relative to PAP/MWCNT/PA system. Another advantage of the inclusion of nanodiamond in nanofiber was the increased electrical conductivity of ND/PAP/MWCNT/PA/PBAE nanocomposites in the range 4.1-5.5 Scm -1 . Owing to outstanding properties of ND/PAP/MWCNT/PA/PBAE, imperative electronic, optical and aerospace industrial applications are expected.
Modeling the Varian On-Board Imager (OBI): Cone-beam CT (CBCT) operating modes

Cone-beam CT (CBCT) imaging is heavily being utilized in radiotherapy treatment as means of treating cancer patients. One of the platforms is the Varian On-Board Imager (oBI) where kilo-volts (kV) CBCT imaging is used. In this study, a model of the OBI is developed to simulate the two scan modes that are available, namely: Full-Fan (FF) and Half-Fan (HF) modes. By shifting the same set of 1024×768 detector panels laterally, a larger field-of-view (FOV) is achieved in the HF scan mode. Using a realistic XCAT phantom, the different FOVs are simulated using analytical Feldkamp-Davis-Kress (FDK) and iterative Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (SART) reconstruction methods. As suggested in literatures, ring and radiant artifacts can occur in the HF mode due to its geometry. To implement fast analytical method, an adequate weight factor needs to be applied on the projection data prior to reconstruction. The percentage normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE) value for FF and HF using analytical FDK reconstruction are 7.12% and 16.63% respectively. Using the iterative SART, the respective values are and 2.69% and 4.65%. The simulation model of the Varian OBI: CBCT operating mode is expected to encourage and enhance further studies on image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) during radiotherapy treatment delivery.
Design and Optimization of Test Solutions for Core-based System-On-Chip Benchmark Circuits Using Genetic Algorithm

The increased usage of embedded pre-designed reusable cores necessitates a core-based test strategy in which cores are tested as separate entities. Test application time is a major issue in System-on-Chip Testing (SOC). Pre-designed cores and reusable modules are popularly used in the design of large and complex systems. As the complexity of system increases, the test application time also significantly increases. Available techniques for testing of core-based SOC do not provide a systematic means of compact test solutions. The test application time must be minimized to transport test data to and from the cores. In this paper, we present a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based approach to optimize the test vectors for globally asynchronous locally synchronous SOC Benchmark Circuits. This approach provides optimal results comparable to other methods of similar problems. Based on our experiments, the test results for four ITC-02 SOC Test Benchmark circuits are presented. The results of GA-based approach are shown to be superior to the heuristic approaches proposed in the literature.
Thrombospondin stimulates motility of human neutrophils

Polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) migrate to sites of inflammation or injury in response to chemoattractants released at those sites. The presence of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins at these sites may influence PMN accumulation at blood vessel walls and enhance their ability to move through tissue. Thrombospondin (TSP), a 450-kD ECM protein whose major proteolytic fragments are a COOH-terminal 140-kD fragment and an NH2-terminal heparin-binding domain (HBD), is secreted by platelets, endothelial cells, and smooth muscle cells. TSP binds specifically to PMN surface receptors and has been shown, in other cell types, to promote directed movement. TSP in solution at low concentrations (30-50 nM) "primed" PMNs for f-Met-Leu-Phe (fMLP)- mediated chemotaxis, increasing the response two- to fourfold. A monoclonal antibody against the HBD of TSP totally abolished this priming effect suggesting that the priming activity resides in the HBD of TSP. Purified HBD retains the priming activity of TSP thereby corroborating the antibody data. TSP alone, in solution at high concentrations (0.5-3.0 microM), stimulated chemotaxis of PMNs and required both the HBD and the 140-kD fragment of TSP. In contrast to TSP in solution, TSP bound to nitrocellulose filters in the range of 20- 70 pmol stimulated random locomotion of PMNs. The number of PMNs migrating in response to bound TSP was approximately two orders of magnitude greater than the number of cells that exhibited chemotaxis in response to soluble TSP or fMLP. Monoclonal antibody C6.7, which recognizes an epitope near the carboxyl terminus of TSP, blocked migration stimulated by bound TSP, suggesting that the activity resides in this domain. Using proteolytic fragments, we demonstrated that bound 140-kD fragment, but not HBD, promoted migration of PMNs. Therefore, TSP released at injury sites, alone or in synergy with chemotactic peptides like fMLP, could play a role in directing PMN movement.
Use of ProtonNuclearMagneticResonanceSpectroscopyin Detectionand

We usedhigh-resolutionprotonnuclearmagneticresonance spectroscopyto detect, identify,and studythe major normal andabnormalorganicacid metabolitesin urinefrompatients with propionicacidemia, methylmalonicaciduria, branchedchain ketoaciduria,isovalericacidemla, and glutaricaciduna type I. Characteristicand diagnosticspectrawere obtainedat 400 MHz for each disorder in all the patients studied and neutral and basic compounds, including amino acids and acyicarnitines, were alsodetected.The techniqueis rapid(10 mm)and requiressmall samples(0.5 mL) and no preliminary extraction or derivative preparation. We believe that it is particularlysuitable for the rapid and acute diagnosis of inbornerror#{233} of metabolism,especiallythe organicacidurias, andfor acute pediatricclinicalcare, when rapidmonitoringof major metabolicalterations is required in a time scale suitable to influencedirectlyand immediatelythe therapy of the patientsconcerned.
Lightweight Filter Architecture for Energy Efficient Mobile Vehicle Localization Based on a Distributed Acoustic Sensor Network

The generic properties of an acoustic signal provide numerous benefits for localization by applying energy-based methods over a deployed wireless sensor network (WSN). However, the signal generated by a stationary target utilizes a significant amount of bandwidth and power in the system without providing further position information. For vehicle localization, this paper proposes a novel proximity velocity vector estimator (PVVE) node architecture in order to capture the energy from a moving vehicle and reject the signal from motionless automobiles around the WSN node. A cascade structure between analog envelope detector and digital exponential smoothing filter presents the velocity vector-sensitive output with low analog circuit and digital computation complexity. The optimal parameters in the exponential smoothing filter are obtained by analytical and mathematical methods for maximum variation over the vehicle speed. For stationary targets, the derived simulation based on the acoustic field parameters demonstrates that the system significantly reduces the communication requirements with low complexity and can be expected to extend the operation time considerably.
Differences in Cognitive and Emotional Processes Between Persecutory and Grandiose Delusions

Background Cognitive models propose that cognitive and emotional processes, in the context of anomalies of experience, lead to and maintain delusions. No large-scale studies have investigated whether persecutory and grandiose delusions reflect differing contributions of reasoning and affective processes. This is complicated by their frequent cooccurrence in schizophrenia. We hypothesized that persecutory and grandiose subtypes would differ significantly in their associations with psychological processes. Methods Participants were the 301 patients from the Psychological Prevention of Relapse in Psychosis Trial (ISRCTN83557988). Persecutory delusions were present in 192 participants, and grandiose delusions were present in 97, while 58 were rated as having delusions both of persecution and grandiosity. Measures of emotional and reasoning processes, at baseline only, were employed. Results A bivariate response model was used. Negative self-evaluations and depression and anxiety predicted a significantly increased chance of persecutory delusions whereas grandiose delusions were predicted by less negative self-evaluations and lower anxiety and depression, along with higher positive self and positive other evaluations. Reasoning biases were common in the whole group and in categorically defined subgroups with only persecutory delusions and only grandiose delusions; however, jumping to conclusions, and belief flexibility were significantly different in the 2 groups, the grandiose group having a higher likelihood of showing a reasoning bias than the persecutory group. Conclusion The significant differences in the processes associated with these 2 delusion subtypes have implications for etiology and for the development of targeted treatment strategies.
Design Creativity for Every Design Problems : A Design-by-Analogy Approach

In this article, we propose Design-by-Analogy (DbA) as an approach with the potential to effectively support designers’ creativity during ideation stage for design problems from Product, Service or Product Service Systems (PSS). We start by contrasting natural evolution and selection of species to economical human systems survival, where the options for companies are adaptation or mutation, where mutation offers innovation and a more immediate response to changing market conditions. We then present results from available DbA studies conducted in engineering and architecture domains as well as some recent studies in the service domain that support our conjecture that DbA may be able to support the development of innovative ideas for design problems from any source. We hope this article triggers discussion about possible avenues and pitfalls for DbA research and broadens our understanding of design related cognitive processes.