Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Virtual machine allocation using server power profile

Cloud computing has potentials to reduce energy consumption in the data center of Cloud providers by consolidating virtual machines into as few servers as possible. The important question then becomes which physical machines should be used first, because machines from different company or different generation may not be equally efficient in energy consumption. The energy efficiency of a server is characterized by its SPEC Power benchmark. This paper proposes two Greedy algorithms, ESO and FL-n, to determine the order of physical machines to be used in a Cloud environment such that the overall energy consumption is minimized. The experimental results show that ESO performed well when servers were from the same generation, using energy not more than 10% over the optimal ordering. FL-n provided good results even when servers were from different generation also, using energy not more than 5% over the optimal in all scenarios.
GPS Probe Based Freeway Real-Time Travel Speed Estimation Using Kalman Filter

To generate accurate real-time travel speed detection results for freeway traffic monitoring systems using GPS probe data, a Kalman filter based travel speed estimation algorithm is studied. According to the implementation with field GPS data from Los Angeles and the evaluation against speed measured by loop detectors as ground truth, correct rate of the computation speed is about 76%. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm for real-time freeway travel speed estimation.
Disc wind in the HH 30 binary models

Recent interferometric observations of the young stellar object (YSO) HH 30 have revealed a low-velocity outflow in the 12 CO J=1-2 molecule line. We present here two models of the low-velocity disc winds with the aim of investigating the origin of this molecular outflow. Following Andlada et al., we treated HH 30 as a binary system. Two cases have been considered: (i) the orbital period P = 53 yr and (ii) P ≤ 1 yr. Calculations showed that in the first case the outflow cone had a spiral-like structure due to summing the velocities of the orbital motion and the disc wind. Such a structure contradicts the observations. In the second case, the outflow cone demonstrates a symmetry relatively to the system axis and agrees well with the observations.
Women on Parole, Identity Processes, and Primary Desistance

The current study employs a prospective mixed-methods design to examine women parolees’ identities early in their supervision and the association of their identity development at that point to their record of subsequent arrests. Guided by narrative identity theory, we first conduct quantitative analysis of the relationship between redemption and contamination narratives and subsequent arrests. We then return to the qualitative interview data to search for additional explanatory themes that shed further light on women’s identity and desistance from crime. Results indicate that identity verification from parole officers and others increases women’s self-esteem and assists them in overcoming barriers to desistance.
Voicesauce: A Program for Voice Analysis

VOICESAUCE is a new application, implemented in MATLAB, which provides automated voice measurements over time from audio recordings. The measures currently computed are F0, H1(*), H2(*), H4(*), H1(*)‐H2(*), H2(*)‐H4(*), H1(*)‐A1, H1(*)‐A2, H1(*)‐A3, energy, Cepstral Peak Prominence, F1–F4, and B1–B4, where (*) indicates that harmonic amplitudes are reported with and without corrections for formant frequencies and bandwidths [Iseli et al. (2006)]. Formant values are calculated using the Snack Sound Toolkit, while F0 is calculated using the STRAIGHT algorithm; harmonic spectra magnitudes are computed pitch‐synchronously. VOICESAUCE takes as input a folder of wav files, and for each input wav file produces a MATLAB file with values every millsecond for all measures. It can operate over the whole input file or over segments delimited by a PRAAT textgrid file. VOICESAUCE then takes these MATLAB outputs, optionally along with electroglottographic measurements obtained separately from PCQUIRERX, and provides con.
A Rapid and Sensitive Diagnostic Screening Assay for Detection of Mycobacteria Including Mycobacterium tuberculosis Directly from Sputum without Extraction

We report a novel approach utilising a real-time PCR screening assay targeting a 53 bp tandemly repeated element present at various loci within the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) genome. Positive samples were identified within a discriminatory melting curve range of 90–94°C, with results obtained in under one hour directly from decontaminated sputum samples without extraction. A panel of 89 smear-positive sputa were used for analytical validation of the assay with 100% concordance, with sensitivity matching that of culture. Cross reactivity was detected within a narrow range of mycobacteria other than tuberculosis (MOTT) (five sputa, three in silico), with the highest sensitivity within M. avium complex (MAC). A year-long head to head evaluation of the test with the GeneXpert platform was carried out with 104 consecutive samples at the Royal Free Hospital, UK. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis of the data revealed that the two tests are approximately equivalent in sensitivity, with the area under the curve being 0.85 and 0.80 for the GeneXpert and our assay, respectively, indicating that the test would be a cost effective screen prior to GeneXpert testing.
Saturation performance analysis of IEEE 802.11 broadcast in 2-D mobile ad hoc networks

The saturation performance of the IEEE 802.11 broadcast scheme in two dimensional (2-D) mobile ad hoc networks is studied in this paper. A simplified yet reasonable system model is built to derive the closed-form expressions of two broadcast reliability metrics, Distance-based Packet Reception Probability and Average Packet Reception Probability. Compared with the existing work in the literature, the proposed system model accounts for more general 2-D network scenarios, and considers both the impact of concurrent transmissions caused by identical backoff intervals and that of hidden nodes caused by a limited sensing range on a tagged reception. All the analysis results are validated by extensive simulations.
International lending with moral hazard and risk of repudiation

The author examines the optimal pattern of lending in an environment in which there are two impediments to contracting. The first impediment is that lenders cannot observe whether borrowers invest or consume borrowed funds. This impediment leads to a moral hazard problem in investment. The second impediment is that the borrower may choose to repudiate his debts. The optimal contract is shown to specify that the borrowing country experience a capital outflow when the worst realizations of output occur. This seemingly perverse pattern of capital outflow forms a necessary part of the optimal solution to the moral hazard problem in investment. Copyright 1991 by The Econometric Society.
Interference driven linear precoding for cognitive radio downlink

We investigate linear precoding in the downlink of a multiuser multiple-input-single-output (MISO) cognitive radio (CR) system where cognitive users (CUs) share the spectrum with primary users (PUs). In previous studies, linear precoding techniques in CR network aim to limit or completely cancel the interference to the primary users while achieving maximum downlink throughput of the CR system. Here, we make use of interference energy when the interference between the primary and cognitive systems is mutually constructive on an instantaneous basis. By doing so, the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is enhanced by the signal energy gleaned from the constructive interference. The presented analysis and simulations show that the proposed precoding techniques outperform the conventional techniques, as the CR transmission actively enhances the performance of the primary users through constructive interference while achieving improved performance for its own transmission.
The IEEE 802.11 active probing analysis and enhancements

The active probing mechanism is a critical function of the IEEE 802.11 protocol. Active probing is used for access points discovery, roaming between different access points, and recently in WLAN-based location determination systems to achieve reliable signal strength measurements. The 802.11 standard leaves it open for manufacturers to implement the active probing mechanism. In this paper, we analyze the performance of the active probing mechanism of the 802.11 protocol. Our analysis shows that the current implementations of the active probing mechanism are inefficient and lead to decreased capacity. We identify two main factors contributing to this negative effect on the capacity. These factors are observed with cards from different manufacturers and lead to increasing the probing cycle time and unnecessary retransmission. We propose different techniques to enhance the efficiency of the active probing mechanism. The proposed techniques require no or minimal changes to the wireless cards' drivers and hence allow incremental deployment.
Whom to blame? An experiment of collective harming and punishing

In a situation, where it is efficient for one of two parties to pollute but highly inefficient if both parties do so, the harmed third party can freely impose its damage claims on both parties what crucially determines which equilibrium to expect. Whereas "equality before the law" requires equal punishments, efficient equilibria are predicted when holding one party responsible and letting the other escape punishment. After discussing equilibrium selection for the game, we report on an experiment with two treatment variables: one that determines when the harmed party announces its potential damage claims and one varying a game- and justice-unrelated difference between the two culprits. According to our experimental data, "equality before the law" dominates but is weakened by asymmetry in wealth and the possibility to announce sanctions.
XDB-IPG : An Extensible Database Architecture for an Information Grid of Heterogeneous and Distributed Information Resources

This paper describes XDB-IPG, an open and extensible database architecture that supports efficient and flexible integration of heterogeneous and distributed information resources. XDB-IPG provides a novel “schema-less” database approach using a document-centered object-relational XML database mapping. This enables structured, unstructured, and semi-structured information to be integrated without requiring document schemas or translation tables. XDB-IPG utilizes existing international protocol standards of the World Wide Web Consortium Architecture Domain and the Internet Engineering Task Force, primarily HTTP, XML and WebDAV . Through a combination of these international protocols, universal database record identifiers, and physical address data types, XDBIPG enables an unlimited number of desktops and distributed information sources to be linked seamlessly and efficiently into an information grid. XDB-IPG has been used to create a powerful set of novel information management systems for a variety of scientific and engineering applications. Introduction – The Information Grid The Information Power Grid (IPG) is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) project for providing seamless access to distributed information resources regardless of location [29]. The project addresses three major categories of distributed resources: 1) hardware resources, such as super computers and scientific instruments, 2) software resources, such as teamwork and CAD programs, and 3) data resources, such as data archives and document databases. This paper is concerned with data resources. While much recent work in this area is focused on access to structured data archives, our focus is on integrating structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information. As with many enterprises, information and information processes services at NASA are highly distributed. NASA and its contractors have hundreds of databases with millions
A Distal Upstream Enhancer from the Myelin Basic Protein Gene Regulates Expression in Myelin-Forming Schwann Cells

In peripheral nerves, large caliber axons are ensheathed by myelin-elaborating Schwann cells. Multiple lines of evidence demonstrate that expression of the genes encoding myelin structural proteins occurs in Schwann cells in response to axonal instructions. To gain further insight into the mechanisms controlling myelin gene expression, we used reporter constructs in transgenic mice to search for the DNA elements that regulate the myelin basic protein (MBP) gene. Through this in vivo investigation, we provide evidence for the participation of multiple, widely distributed, positive and negative elements in the overall control of MBPexpression. Notably, all constructs bearing a 0.6 kb far-upstream sequence, designated Schwann cell enhancer 1 (SCE1), expressed at high levels in myelin-forming Schwann cells. In addition, robust targeting activity conferred by SCE1 was shown to be independent of otherMBP 5′ flanking sequence. These observations suggest that SCE1 will make available a powerful tool to drive transgene expression in myelinating Schwann cells and that a focused analysis of the SCE1 sequence will lead to the identification of transcription factor binding sites that positively regulate MBPexpression.
Parallelized Sequence Comparison of Human and Naked Mole Rat for Aging Studies

A significant increase in the elderly population in the last few decades is expected to rise even more in near future. Inspite of advancement in research on aging; still aging remains unrevealed to a larger extent. Aging is considered to be a major cause for many diseases like cancer, diabetes, Parkinson. The naked mole rat is one of the most promising rodents in aging research. The present work deals with the application of parallel computation to compare the mitochondrial RNA of human with naked mole rat using combined approach of Spectral Clustering and Parallel Markov Models (SCPMM). The clusters obtained using this combined approach appears to be more related to each other than the conventional hierarchical clustering algorithms thus inferring more information from parallel alignment-free sequence comparison. Further studies are being carried out to optimize the code by building a MATLAB-based down-link physical-layer simulator using the parallel computing toolbox and the parallel control flow structure, which significantly reduces the simulation time on multi-core processors.
Using humor and boosting emotions: An affect-based study of managerial humor, employees’ emotions and psychological capital

Evidence from emerging scholarly investigations consistently points to managerial humor as fruitful new grounds to expand management knowledge and practice. In light of this, the present study examined managerial humor as an affective event at work that has short-term emotional and long-term psychological outcomes for employees. To test this empirically, we recruited a sample of 2498 Australian employees to participate in a field experience sampling study. We also considered the potential moderating effect of leader–member exchange on the humor–emotions relationship. Findings provide initial support for managerial humor as an affective event such that when employees perceived their manager’s humor as positive they reported experiencing positive emotions, and vice versa. Importantly, employees with high-quality relationships with their managers responded to their manager’s humor use with a greater number of positive emotions and fewer negative emotions than did employees with low-quality relationships with their managers. We argue that humor is an event that managers must responsibly manage in order to produce positive emotional experiences for employees and support healthy emotion regulation at work. We also discuss the conditions under which it is advisable for managers to use humor with employees, and suggest future research directions to develop this growing field of inquiry.
Persistent RNNs: Stashing Recurrent Weights On-Chip

This paper introduces a new technique for mapping Deep Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) efficiently onto GPUs. We show how it is possible to achieve substantially higher computational throughput at low mini-batch sizes than direct implementations of RNNs based on matrix multiplications. The key to our approach is the use of persistent computational kernels that exploit the GPU's inverted memory hierarchy to reuse network weights over multiple timesteps. Our initial implementation sustains 2.8 TFLOP/s at a mini-batch size of 4 on an NVIDIA TitanX GPU. This provides a 16× reduction in activation memory footprint, enables model training with 12× more parameters on the same hardware, allows us to strongly scale RNN training to 128 GPUs, and allows us to efficiently explore end-to-end speech recognition models with over 100 layers.
Implementing specialist psychological support for caregivers in psychosis services: a preliminary report*

Abstract Background: Research demonstrates the importance of supporting caregivers of people with psychosis, but routine implementation studies are lacking. We evaluate a newly-developed caregiver support service, offering individual and group psychoeducation, practical advice and emotional support, working alongside usual community mental health provision for people with established psychosis. Aims: We aimed to provide analysis of preliminary data on the rate and suitability of referrals, engagement, and helpfulness, to inform future larger-scale implementation and evaluation. Method: We conducted a mixed-methods audit during the service’s first ten operational months (01 September 2013–30 June 2014). Caregivers gave qualitative feedback and completed measures of the impact of caregiving pre- and post-intervention. Results: Referrals totalled 103 (10/month), with 45 (44%) initial meetings; and 28 (27%) individual interventions (≥1 sessions, mode = 3). Caregivers were predominantly black British/African/Caribbean parents. Self-reported needs and caregiving experiences were consistent with the literature. Two-thirds of caregivers were clinically distressed. Qualitative feedback showed that caregivers valued the service. Outcomes suggest improved experiences of caregiving following intervention. Conclusions: Findings highlight the potential benefits and challenges of routinely providing psychologically-focused caregiver support. Limitations and future plans are discussed.
Heterogeneous Behavioral Expectations , Exchange Rate Dynamics and Monetary Policy Rules

In this paper the performance of alternative monetary policy rules in a macroeconomic environment characterized by different behavioral expectations formation is analyzed. We assume two behavioral forecasting rules concerning the nominal exchange rate based on fundamentalism and chartism, as it is usual in the literature. Based on stochastic simulation, we can identify the flexible PPI inflation targeting as the dominant monetary policy rule, since it delivers the lowest volatility not only of output and inflation, but also of the nominal exchange rate.
Using essays to evaluate learning and comparing human scoring of essays to computer scoring systems

Prior research conducted by Butcher, Davies, and Cook (2015, in preparation) demonstrated that using concept maps to search within the online scientific database from the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) decreases cognitive effort over more common keyword-based searches; our purpose was to determine whether this decreased cognitive effort translated into different learning gains as measured by evaluating and scoring preand postessays. Teachers are one group who would benefit from more effective, less cognitively demanding ways of finding online material for their classrooms, so the participants in this study were student preservice as well as practicing inservice teachers. Using a rubric developed to evaluate the specific essays written for the Butcher et al. study, we found that participants were able to learn from online search tasks, as measured by more correct information contained in a postessay compared to a pre-essay, and a higher overall score; but this learning was not a function of which online search methods were used. The decreased cognitive effort did not lead to more learning gains as measured in this study. Our second study compared the hand-scored results from the postessays to two computerized scoring systems: Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Coh-Metrix. The purpose of such systems is to help alleviate some of the issues with scoring large numbers of essays by hand. LSA determines semantic similarity between two texts, and Coh-Metrix gives measures of cohesion within each text. LSA correlated moderately with the hand scores (0.44 for the preservice teachers and 0.38 for inservice teachers). Other
During Critical Care Hospitalization Healthcare Team , and Emotional Distress in Patients ' Family Members Optimism , Satisfaction With Needs Met , Interpersonal Perceptions of the

Personal use only. For copyright permission information: Published online http://www.ajcconline. org © 2005 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses 2005;14:202-210 Am J Crit Care and Rao Ivatury Stephen M. Auerbach, Donald J. Kiesler, Jennifer Wartella, Sarah Rausch, Kevin R. Ward During Critical Care Hospitalization Healthcare Team, and Emotional Distress in Patients' Family Members Optimism, Satisfaction With Needs Met, Interpersonal Perceptions of the
Training needs and life planning in the new educational and social landscape: An empirical study with adolescents living in south-eastern sicily

Adolescence is a period of physical and psychological changes, it is the potential background to develop a life planning coherent with their own values and aspirations. The reality of today, basically characterized by a strong discontinuity, a source of instability and insecurity, implies the need for flexibility characteristics that appear essential for the future of young people and for society. Uncertainty, typical of current realities, involves young people's identities, especially as regards the dimensions of the Self, Present and Future, "what I am" and "what will I be", or "what I fear to become ", those that Markus (Markus et al, 1986, 1990) has described as Possible Selves and which play an active role (Working Self), also in building the relationship with one’s own context life and future. This study explores the social representational framework in a sample of 360 adolescents living in South-Eastern Sicily in relation to: need of Education, Self, Work, Territory, Values systems, and Possible Selves articulation, in order to test the hypothesis that these dimensions are closely related. The Likert Scale, Values Schwartz Scale (2003) and Semantic Differentials were used. The data seem to confirm the hypothesis and underline the need for a better correspondence between the education received, personal expectations and the demands of the job market, as well as the learning of meta-skills useful to address the social background, characterized by an increasing flexibility, insecurity and instability. Attitudes of psychological distance emerge in relation to their own territory, both with regard to work and the present and the future social success.
Reuse Distance-Based Probabilistic Cache Replacement

This article proposes Probabilistic Replacement Policy (PRP), a novel replacement policy that evicts the line with minimum estimated hit probability under optimal replacement instead of the line with maximum expected reuse distance. The latter is optimal under the independent reference model of programs, which does not hold for last-level caches (LLC). PRP requires 7% and 2% metadata overheads in the cache and DRAM respectively. Using a sampling scheme makes DRAM overhead negligible, with minimal performance impact. Including detailed overhead modeling and equal cache areas, PRP outperforms SHiP, a state-of-the-art LLC replacement algorithm, by 4% for memory-intensive SPEC-CPU2006 benchmarks.