Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Error-Efficient Computing Systems

© 2017 Now Publishers Inc. All rights reserved. This survey explores the theory and practice of techniques to make computing systems faster or more energy-efficient by allowing them to make controlled errors. In the same way that systems which only use as much energy as necessary are referred to as being energy-efficient, you can think of the class of systems addressed by this survey as being error-efficient: They only prevent as many errors as they need to. The definition of what constitutes an error varies across the parts of a system. And the errors which are acceptable depend on the application at hand. In computing systems, making errors, when behaving correctly would be too expensive, can conserve resources. The resources conserved may be time: By making some errors, systems may be faster. The resource may also be energy: A system may use less power from its batteries or from the electrical grid by only avoiding certain errors while tolerating benign errors that are associated with reduced power consumption. The resource in question may be an even more abstract quantity such as consistency of ordering of the outputs of a system. This survey is for anyone interested in an end-to-end view of one set of techniques that address the theory and practice of making computing systems more efficient by trading errors for improved efficiency.
Rectification by a Monolayer of Hexadecylquinolinium Tricyanoquinodimethanide between Gold Electrodes We thank the DOE-EPSCoR (DE-FC02-91-ER-75678) for financial support.

The asymmetry can be ascribed to the intervalencetransfer band between the HOMO and LUMO, appropriatelyshifted by the applied electrical potential, and coupled tolevels in the Al electrodes. The optical absorption at 570 nm(2.17 eV) in films of 1 can be ascribed to the HOMO–LUMOgap, or in slightly different language, to the transition from theground state (dipole moment 43 8D)
Health‐Promoting Interventions for Persons Aged 80 and Older Are Successful in the Short Term—Results from the Randomized and Three‐Armed Elderly Persons in the Risk Zone Study

To examine the outcomes of the Elderly Persons in the Risk Zone study, which was designed to evaluate whether it is possible to delay deterioration if a health‐promoting intervention is made when an older adult (≥80) is at risk of becoming frail and whether a multiprofessional group intervention is more effective in delaying deterioration than a single preventive home visit with regard to frailty, self‐rated health, and activities of daily living (ADLs) at 3‐month follow‐up.
Refresher corner What is insulin resistance ?

Reduced insulin responses and subsequent compensatory elevated plasma insulin concentrations result in abnormal function in all body tissues and present clinically as serious cardiovascular, renal, and diabetic related diseases. Insulin resistance most frequently results from changes in post-insulin receptor signalling pathways although insulin receptor changes may occur, (eg, production of receptor antibodies). Insulin resistance is genetically linked but obesity and lack of exercise are causes. Insulin resistance precedes type 2 diabetes and is strongly associated with hypertension, the cardiometabolic syndrome and polycystic ovary disease. There are a number of markers of insulin resistance and its treatment includes lifestyle changes and drug therapy for components of the syndrome. Heart Metab. 2006;30:30–34.
Inferring Conservatism from the Asymmetric Reporting of Accruals: A Conditional Heteroscedastic Modeling Approach

I develop an ex-post conservativism measure (that identifies conservatism based on whether firms understate or overstate earnings) rather than an ex-ante conservatism measure (that suffices as a governance mechanism [such as conservative accounting rules] to compel managers to be conservative). Prior conditional conservatism models infer asymmetric timeliness from public information (Basu, 1997; Khan and Watts, 2009; Collins et al, 2014) and operating cash flows (Ball and Shivakumar, 2005, 2006, 2008) rather than directly from discretionary accruals (DCA) – the tool available to and which managers intentionally use to understate or overstate earnings (Dechow et al, 1995). I thus propose a model (i.e. the augmented univariate conditional heteroscedastic [UCH] model) that mechanically removes linear dependence in accruals to isolate uncorrelated DCA, which is then used to model the asymmetric reporting of negative versus positive DCA. Intuitively, a firm using substantially more negative than positive DCA is characteristically conservative. I show that this measure positively covaries with extant measures, aligns with economic explanations (e.g. contracting, taxation, litigation, regulation, inter alia) driving conservatism, and explains other firm variables (e.g. crash risk, earnings management).
Leptin activation of ATP‐sensitive K+ (KATP) channels in rat CRI‐G1 insulinoma cells involves disruption of the actin cytoskeleton

1 The role of the cytoskeleton in leptin‐induced activation of ATP‐sensitive K+ (KATP) channels was examined in rat CRI‐G1 insulin‐secreting cells using patch clamp and fluorescence imaging techniques. 2 In whole cell recordings, dialysis with the actin filament stabiliser phalloidin (10 μm) prevented KATP channel activation by leptin. 3 Application of the actin filament destabilising agents deoxyribonuclease type 1 (DNase 1; 50 μg ml−1) or cytochalasin B (10 μm) to intact cells or inside‐out membrane patches also increased KATP channel activity in a phalloidin‐dependent manner. 4 The anti‐microtubule agents nocodazole (10 μm) and colchicine (100 μm) had no effect on KATP channel activity. 5 Fluorescence staining of the cells with rhodamine‐conjugated phalloidin revealed rapid disassembly of actin filaments by cytochalasin B and leptin, the latter action being prevented by the phosphoinositide 3 (PI 3)‐kinase inhibitor LY 294002. 6 Activation of KATP channels by the PI 3‐kinase product phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5‐trisphosphate (PtdIns(3,4,5)P3) was also prevented by phalloidin. This is consistent with the notion that leptin activates KATP channels in these cells by an increase in PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 or a similar 3‐phosphorylated phosphoinositol lipid, resulting in actin filament disruption.
An SSVEP-Based Brain–Computer Interface for Text Spelling With Adaptive Queries That Maximize Information Gain Rates

This paper presents a brain-computer interface for text entry using steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP). Like other SSVEP-based spellers, ours identifies the desired input character by posing questions (or queries) to users through a visual interface. Each query defines a mapping from possible characters to steady-state stimuli. The user responds by attending to one of these stimuli. Unlike other SSVEP-based spellers, ours chooses from a much larger pool of possible queries-on the order of ten thousand instead of ten. The larger query pool allows our speller to adapt more effectively to the inherent structure of what is being typed and to the input performance of the user, both of which make certain queries provide more information than others. In particular, our speller chooses queries from this pool that maximize the amount of information to be received per unit of time, a measure of mutual information that we call information gain rate. To validate our interface, we compared it with two other state-of-the-art SSVEP-based spellers, which were re-implemented to use the same input mechanism. Results showed that our interface, with the larger query pool, allowed users to spell multiple-word texts nearly twice as fast as they could with the compared spellers.
A thickness-varying sub-wavelength grating focusing lens for TE polarization light

A focusing lens for TE polarization light based on silicon sub-wavelength gratings using two different thicknesses is proposed. The properties are numerically studied with Finite Element Method (FEM). Total transmissivity is 72% and the full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) at focal plane is 0. 8μm at a wavelength of 1550nm.
Bartonella clarridgeiae and Bartonella vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii exposure in captive wild canids in Brazil

SUMMARY Wild canids are potential hosts for numerous species of Bartonella, yet little research has been done to quantify their infection rates in South America. We sought to investigate Bartonella seroprevalence in captive wild canids from 19 zoos in São Paulo and Mato Grosso states, Brazil. Blood samples were collected from 97 wild canids belonging to four different native species and three European wolves (Canis lupus). Indirect immunofluorescent antibody testing was performed to detect the presence of B. henselae, B. vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii, B. clarridgeiae, and B. rochalimae. Overall, Bartonella antibodies were detected in 11 of the canids, including five (12·8%) of 39 crab-eating foxes (Cerdocyon thous), three (11·1%) of 27 bush dogs (Speothos venaticus), two (8·7%) of 23 maned wolves (Chrysocyon brachyurus) and one (12·5%) of eight hoary foxes (Lycalopex vetulus), with titres ranging from 1:64 to 1:512. Knowing that many species of canids make excellent reservoir hosts for Bartonella, and that there is zoonotic potential for all Bartonella spp. tested for, it will be important to conduct further research in non-captive wild canids to gain an accurate understanding of Bartonella infection in free-ranging wild canids in South America.
Some Hamacher Aggregation Operators Based on the Interval-Valued Intuitionistic Fuzzy Numbers and Their Application to Group Decision Making

With respect to multiple attribute group decision-making problems in which attribute values take the form of the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers, the group decision-making methods based on some Hamacher aggregation operators, which extended the algebraic aggregation operators and Einstein aggregation operators, are developed. First, an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy Hamacher weighted averaging operator, interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy Hamacher-ordered weighted averaging operator, interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy Hamacher hybrid weighted averaging operator, interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy Hamacher geometric weighted averaging operator, interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy Hamacher geometric-ordered weighted averaging operator, and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy Hamacher geometric hybrid weighted averaging operator are proposed. Some desirable properties of these operators, such as commutativity, idempotency, monotonicity, and boundedness, are studied, and some special cases in these operators are analyzed. Furthermore, two methods to multicriteria decision group making based on these operators are developed. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the proposed methods and to demonstrate their practicality and effectiveness.
The Onset of Nonmotor Symptoms in Parkinson's disease (The ONSET PD Study)

Nonmotor symptoms (NMS) in Parkinson's disease (PD) can precede onset of motor symptoms. Relationship between premotor symptoms onset and motor features is limited. Our aim is to describe the presence and perceived onset of NMS in PD as well as their possible association with motor phenotype. Presence and onset of NMS were assessed by a custom‐made questionnaire in 109 newly diagnosed untreated PD patients and 107 controls from 11 Spanish and Austrian centers. Seventeen of thirty‐one NMS were more common in patients than controls (P < 0.05). They were usually mild and frequently reported to occur at different time‐spans before motor symptoms. Anhedonia, apathy, memory complaints, and inattention occurred more frequently during the 2‐year premotor period. Those reported more frequently in the 2‐ to 10‐year premotor period were smell loss, mood disturbances, taste loss, excessive sweating, fatigue, and pain. Constipation, dream‐enacting behavior, excessive daytime sleepiness, and postprandial fullness were frequently perceived more than 10 years before motor symptoms. No correlation between NMS burden and motor severity, age, or gender was observed. NMS associated in four clusters: rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder symptoms‐constipation, cognition‐related, mood‐related, and sensory clusters. No cluster was associated with a specific motor phenotype or severity. NMS are common in early unmedicated PD and frequently reported to occur in the premotor period. They are generally mild, but a patient subgroup showed high NMS burden mainly resulting from cognition‐related symptoms. Certain NMS when present at the time of assessment or in the premotor stage, either alone or in combination, allowed discriminating PD from controls. © 2014 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Initial chromosome damage but not DNA damage is greater in ataxia telangiectasia cells.

Cells derived from individuals with ataxia telangiectasia (AT) exhibit increased sensitivity to ionizing radiation and certain drugs (e.g., bleomycin, neocarzinostatin, and etoposide) as evidenced by decreased survival and increased chromosome aberrations at mitosis when compared with normal cell lines. To understand better the basis of this sensitivity, three AT and two normal lymphoblastoid cell lines were fractionated into cell cycle phase-enriched populations by centrifugal elutriation and then examined for their survival and their relative initial levels of DNA damage (neutral DNA filter elution) and chromosome damage (premature chromosome condensation). AT cells exhibited decreased levels of survival in all phases of the cell cycle; however, AT cells in early G1 phase were especially sensitive compared with normal cells in G1 phase. While AT and normal cells exhibited similar levels of initial DNA double-strand breaks in exponential populations as well as throughout the cell cycle, AT cells showed nearly twofold higher initial levels of chromosome damage than normal control cells in G1 and G2 phase. These results suggest that there is a higher rate of conversion of DNA double-strand breaks into chromosome breaks in AT cells, perhaps due to a difference in chromatin organization or stability. Thus one determining component of cellular radiosensitivity might include chromatin structure.
Lipopolysaccharide induces Rac1-dependent reactive oxygen species formation and coordinates tumor necrosis factor-alpha secretion through IKK regulation of NF-kappa B.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are important second messengers generated in response to many types of environmental stress. In this setting, changes in intracellular ROS can activate signal transduction pathways that influence how cells react to their environment. In sepsis, a dynamic proinflammatory cellular response to bacterial toxins (e.g. lipopolysaccharide or LPS) leads to widespread organ damage and death. The present study demonstrates for the first time that the activation of Rac1 (a GTP-binding protein), and the subsequent production of ROS, constitutes a major pathway involved in NFkappaB-mediated tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFalpha) secretion following LPS challenge in macrophages. Expression of a dominant negative mutant of Rac1 (N17Rac1) reduced Rac1 activation, ROS formation, NFkappaB activation, and TNFalpha secretion following LPS stimulation. In contrast, expression of a dominant active form of Rac1 (V12Rac1) mimicked these effects in the absence of LPS stimulation. IKKalpha and IKKbeta were both required downstream modulators of LPS-activated Rac1, since the expression of either of the IKK dominant mutants (IKKalphaKM or IKKbetaKA) drastically reduced NFkappaB-dependent TNFalpha secretion. Moreover, studies using CD14 blocking antibodies suggest that Rac1 induces TNFalpha secretion through a pathway independent of CD14. However, a maximum therapeutic inhibition of LPS-induced TNFalpha secretion occurred when both CD14 and Rac1 pathways were inhibited. Our results suggest that targeting both Rac1- and CD14-dependent pathways could be a useful therapeutic strategy for attenuating the proinflammatory cytokine response during the course of sepsis.
Gender-specific molecular heterosis of dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2) for smoking in schizophrenia.

We examined the genetic effect of DRD2 A1 allele in 167 Korean schizophrenics in relation to their smoking habit. Although there was no apparent difference in the genotype distributions of DRD2 gene among the female schizophrenics (n = 66), the male counterpart (n = 101) showed significant differences in their genotype distributions. The comparison between male smoking and non-smoking patients showed the difference in genotype distribution (P = 0.010) with a higher prevalence of A1 allele (P = 0.020) and frequency of heterozygotes (P = 0.005), but not frequency of the A1 allele. The A1A2 heterozygotes male showed significantly higher smoking rate compared to the A1A1 or A2A2 homozygotes male, and non-smokers were deficient in heterozygotes. By contrast, among female schizophrenics, the heterozygotes showed a lower smoking rate than homozygotes and there were more heterozygotes in non-smokers. The deviation from Hardy-Weinberg expectations was observed in male and female non-smokers showing quite opposite profiles. Highly significant differences were seen between male and female non-smokers in A1 prevalence (P = 0.001), genotype distribution (P = 0.00011), and frequency of heterozygotes (P = 0.00003), but not in A1 frequency. The analyses from both male and female as one group showing no significant difference in the genotype distributions between smokers and non-smokers could be explained by the gender difference in the genetic effect of DRD2 A1 allele. Our findings present the gender-specific molecular heterosis of DRD2 gene in relation specifically to the smoking status of schizophrenic patients. They indicate the importance of heterosis and gender effects that should be taken into consideration for the association studies.
Parameters optimization of classifier and feature selection based on improved artificial bee colony algorithm

The feature subset selection, along with the parameters of classifier significantly influences the classification accuracy. In order to ensure the optimal classification performance, the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is proposed to simultaneously optimize the feature subset and the parameters of support vector machines (SVM), meanwhile for improving the optimizing performance of ABC algorithm, the initialization and scout bee phase are improved. To evaluate the proposed approach, the simulation was executed based on datasets from the UCI database. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by simulation results.
Dynamics of Dividend Payout in Emerging Stock Markets: Evidence from Public Firms at Nairobi Securities Exchange, Kenya

Dividend decisions are central to corporate finance because of its relationship with firm value, finance and investment. Emerging stock markets like the Nairobi Securities Exchange have been hypothesized to exhibit unpredictable dividend behavior by some finance scholars. The thesis is guided by the hypothesis that emerging market firms following dividend pattern different from that of developed stock markets and that determinants of payout exhibit different behavior in different stock exchanges. A mixed design involving panel data from 40 firms over the period 2000 to 2010 and cross section data from finance officers of 40 firms provide evidence of dividend dynamics for quoted companies at the exchange. Panel data estimation techniques along with logistic regression are applied in analysis and testing of hypotheses at 0.05 level based on firm and industry characteristics. Conclusions include; dividends payout by listed firms at the NSE are influenced and predicted mainly by prior dividends (73%) followed by changes in current after tax earnings (3.5%) and lastly business risk to a lesser extent. Secondly, three companies consistently paid significantly higher dividends than their peers in the study period. Thirdly, majority of corporate managers do not smooth dividends when distributing earnings. Forth, Fama and Babiak (1968) dividend model best explains dividend behaviour of NSE firms compared to Lintner (1956) model. Fifth dividend payout in this market is explained by agency cost, signaling and information asymmetry theories. Lastly industry and time effects have no link to dividend decisions of firms in the market. Recommendations include; Shareholders and new investors at NSE should consider prior dividends and earnings changes when making choices about which stock(s) to buy. Dividend payout need to be stabilized by corporate managers to enhance value especially by firms in sectors facing high risk and growth prospects. More so dividend paying firms are preferred by investors to non-paying firms and that changes in dividends elicit excitement among investors compared to keeping dividend unchanged. Finally management of three firms namely Bamburi Cement, Kapchorua Tea and BOC Ltd possess superior talent compared to other firms in their respective industries.
Financial Distress Pre-Warning Indicators: A Case Study on Italian Listed Companies

The reform of the Italian insolvency law in 2005 introduced the troubled debt restructuring (TDR) procedure as a means to restore companies that are in financial distress and avoid potential liquidation. The success of this procedure depends strictly on the timeliness of intervention. Therefore, the availability of a prediction tool appears to be crucial. This paper focuses on the ability of accounting ratios to predict the financial distress status of a firm as defined by the law. Based on a linear discriminant analysis, we formulate the probability of a firm filing for TDR in one year, as well as other quantitative techniques that are intended to monitor financial health. Specifically, we begin with a test of Altman's Z, Z0 and Z00 scores for bankruptcy on the listed Italian companies that filed for TDR in the period 2005-12. The test results do not completely satisfy the TDR prediction. We then introduce a new score formula based on seven accounting ratios and specific coefficients. Several confirmative analyses are also conducted to validate the predictive accuracy and the generalization power of our score formula.
Constrained blind deconvolution using Wirtinger flow methods

In this work we consider one-dimensional blind deconvolution with prior knowledge of signal autocorrelations in the classical framework of polynomial factorization. In particular this univariate case highly suffers from several non-trivial ambiguities and therefore blind deconvolution is known to be ill-posed in general. However, if additional autocorrelation information is available and the corresponding polynomials are co-prime, blind deconvolution is uniquely solvable up to global phase. Using lifting, the outer product of the unknown vectors is the solution to a (convex) semi-definite program (SDP) demonstrating that -theoretically- recovery is computationally tractable. However, for practical applications efficient algorithms are required which should operate in the original signal space. To this end we also discuss a gradient descent algorithm (Wirtinger flow) for the original non-convex problem. We demonstrate numerically that such an approach has performance comparable to the semidefinite program in the noisy case. Our work is motivated by applications in blind communication scenarios and we will discuss a specific signaling scheme where information is encoded into polynomial roots.