Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using unlabeled Wi-Fi scan data to discover occupancy patterns of private households

This poster presents the homeset algorithm, a lightweight approach to estimate occupancy schedules of private households. The algorithm relies on the mobile phones of households' occupants to collect Wi-Fi scans. The scans are then used to determine if occupants are at home or not. The algorithm operates in an autonomous fashion using only information available locally on the mobile phones. We validate our approach using a data set from the Nokia Lausanne Data Collection Campaign.
Identification of the Receptor Subtype Involved in the Analgesic Effect of Neurotensin

The neuropeptide neurotensin (NT) elicits hypothermic and naloxone-insensitive analgesic responses after brain injection. Recent pharmacological evidence obtained with NT agonists and antagonists suggests that these effects are mediated by a receptor distinct from the initially cloned high-affinity NT receptor (NTR1). The recent cloning of a second NT receptor (NTR2) prompted us to evaluate its role in NT-induced analgesia. Intracerebroventricular injections in mice of two different antisense oligodeoxynucleotides from the NTR2 markedly decreased NTR2 mRNA and protein and reduced NT-induced analgesia. This effect was specific, because NTR1 levels were unaffected, and sense or scramble oligodeoxynucleotides had no effect. Structure–activity studies revealed a close correlation between the analgesic potency of NT analogs and their affinity for the NTR2 and disclosed potent and selective agonists of this receptor. These data confirm that NTR1 is involved in the NT-elicited turning behavior and demonstrate that the NTR2 mediates NT-induced analgesia.
Predicting Treatment Cost for Bacterial Diarrhoeaat a Regional Hospital in Thailand*

The aim of this study was to estimate the treatment cost and formulate a cost-function for bacterial diarrhoea among patients in a Thai regional hospital. This study was an incidence-based cost-of-illness analysis from a hospital perspective, employing a micro-costing approach. It covered new episodes of both outpatients and inpatients who were diagnosed to have bacterial diarrhoea (ICD-10 code A00-A05) and who received treatment during 1 October 2000–31 July 2003. Retrospective data were collected from medical records of the hospital. The study covered 384 episodes, and the mean age of patients was 24 years. The average treatment costs (at 2002 prices; US$ 1=approximately 40 Thai baht) were US$ 11.29, 76.78, and 44.72 per outpatient episode, inpatient episode, and outpatient/inpatient combined episode respectively. Furthermore, the positive significant predictor variables were: inpatient care, other Salmonella-associated infections, shigellosis, other bacterial intestinal infections, and the health insurance scheme. The fitted model was able to predict greater than 80% of the treatment cost. The estimation of simulated patients demonstrated a wide range of costs, from US$ 10 per episode to US$ 163 per episode. Overall, hospital administrators can apply these results in cost-containment interventions.
Proximity of Transmembrane Segments 5 and 8 of the Glutamate Transporter GLT-1 Inferred from Paired Cysteine Mutagenesis

Background GLT-1 is a glial glutamate transporter which maintains low synaptic concentrations of the excitatory neurotransmitter enabling efficient synaptic transmission. Based on the crystal structure of the bacterial homologue GltPh, it has been proposed that the reentrant loop HP2, which connects transmembrane domains (TM) 7 and 8, moves to open and close access to the binding pocket from the extracellular medium. However the conformation change between TM5 and TM8 during the transport cycle is not clear yet. We used paired cysteine mutagenesis in conjunction with treatments with Copper(II)(1,10-Phenanthroline)3 (CuPh), to verify the predicted proximity of residues located at these structural elements of GLT-1. Methodology/Principal Findings To assess the proximity of transmembrane domain (TM) 5 relative to TM8 during transport by the glial glutamate transporter GLT-1/EAAT2, cysteine pairs were introduced at the extracellular ends of these structural elements. A complete inhibition of transport by Copper(II)(1,10-Phenanthroline)3 is observed in the double mutants I295C/I463C and G297C/I463C, but not in the corresponding single mutants. Glutamate and potassium, both expected to increase the proportion of inward-facing transporters, significantly protected against the inhibition of transport activity of I295C/I463C and G297C/I463C by CuPh. Transport by the double mutants I295C/I463C and G297C/I463C also was inhibited by Cd2+. Conclusions/Significance Our results suggest that TM5 (Ile-295, Gly-297) is in close proximity to TM8 (Ile-463) in the mammalian transporter, and that the spatial relationship between these domains is altered during the transport cycle.
Sampling + DMR: Practical and low-overhead permanent fault detection

With technology scaling, manufacture-time and in-field permanent faults are becoming a fundamental problem. Multi-core architectures with spares can tolerate them by detecting and isolating faulty cores, but the required fault detection coverage becomes effectively 100% as the number of permanent faults increases. Dual-modular redundancy(DMR) can provide 100% coverage without assuming device-level fault models, but its overhead is excessive. In this paper, we explore a simple and low-overhead mechanism we call Sampling-DMR: run in DMR mode for a small percentage (1% of the time for example) of each periodic execution window (5 million cycles for example). Although Sampling-DMR can leave some errors undetected, we argue the permanent fault coverage is 100% because it can detect all faults eventually. SamplingDMR thus introduces a system paradigm of restricting all permanent faults' effects to small finite windows of error occurrence. We prove an ultimate upper bound exists on total missed errors and develop a probabilistic model to analyze the distribution of the number of undetected errors and detection latency. The model is validated using full gate-level fault injection experiments for an actual processor running full application software. Sampling-DMR outperforms conventional techniques in terms of fault coverage, sustains similar detection latency guarantees, and limits energy and performance overheads to less than 2%.
Mineralocorticoid Receptor Blockade Enhances the Antiproteinuric Effect of an Angiotensin II Blocker through Inhibiting Podocyte Injury in Type 2 Diabetic Rats

Treatment with angiotensin II type 1 receptor blockers (ARBs) is the first-line therapy for hypertensive patients with diabetic nephropathy. However, emerging clinical evidence indicates that mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) blockers have blood pressure-independent antiproteinuric effects. We sought to determine whether treatment with an MR blocker, eplerenone, enhances the effects of an ARB, telmisartan, on podocyte injury and proteinuria in type 2 diabetic Otsuka-Long-Evans-Tokushima-Fatty (OLETF) rats. From 20 to 50 weeks old, diabetic OLETF rats showed higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) and urinary protein excretion (UproteinV) than nondiabetic control Long-Evans-Tokushima-Otsuka rats. At 50 weeks old, OLETF rats also showed glomerular sclerosis and podocyte injury, whereas nephrin and podocin mRNA levels in isolated glomeruli were significantly decreased. Treatment with telmisartan (3 mg/kg/day p.o.) decreased SBP and UproteinV, increased nephrin and podocin mRNA levels, and attenuated glomerular sclerosis and podocyte injury. Eplerenone (100 mg/kg/day p.o.) did not alter SBP but elicited similar changes in renal parameters. However, greater reductions in UproteinV and podocyte injury and greater increases in nephrin and podocin mRNA levels were observed in the combination treatment group. Hydralazine (25 mg/kg/day p.o.) decreased SBP but did not alter any renal parameters. These data indicate that MR blockade enhances the SBP-independent antiproteinuric effect of an ARB through inhibiting podocyte injury in type 2 diabetic rats.
Cloning, sequencing, and expression of genes encoding phosphotransacetylase and acetate kinase from Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824

The enzymes phosphotransacetylase (PTA) and acetate kinase (AK) catalyze the conversion of acetyl coenzyme A to acetate in the fermentation of Clostridium acetobutylicum. The acetate-producing step is an important element in the acidogenic fermentation stage and generates ATP for clostridial cell growth. The genes pta and ack, encoding PTA and AK, respectively, were cloned and sequenced. Enzyme activity assays were performed on cell extracts from Escherichia coli and C. acetobutylicum harboring the subclone, and both AK and PTA activities were shown to be elevated. DNA sequence analysis showed that the pta and ack genes are adjacent in the clostridial chromosome, with pta upstream. The pta gene encodes a protein of 333 amino acid residues with a calculated molecular mass of 36.2 kDa, and ack encodes a polypeptide of 401 residues with a molecular mass of 44.3 kDa. Primer extension analysis identified a single transcriptional start site located 70 bp upstream of the start codon for the pta gene, suggesting an operon arrangement for these tandem genes. The results from overexpression of ack and pta in C. acetobutylicum showed that the final ratios of acetate to other major products were higher and that there was a greater proportion of two- versus four-carbon-derived products.
Taming Neonatal Hypoxic–Ischemic Brain Injury by Intranasal Delivery of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1

Background and Purpose— Plasminogen activator inhibitor-I (PAI-1), a ≈50-kDa serine protease inhibitor, markedly reduces the extravascular toxicity of tissue-type plasminogen activator in experimental hypoxic–ischemic (HI) brain injury of newborns. However, the current treatment with PAI-1 requires intracerebroventricle injection to cross the blood–brain barrier, which is an invasive procedure of limited clinical potential. Thus, we tested whether intranasal administration of PAI-1 can bypass blood–brain barrier and mitigate neonatal HI brain injury. Methods— Rat pups were subjected to HI, with or without lipopolysaccharide pre-exposure, followed by intranasal delivery of a stable-mutant form of PAI-1 (CPAI). Results— Immunoblotting showed that CPAI sequentially entered the olfactory bulbs and cerebral cortex after intranasal delivery and reduced ≈75% of brain atrophy in HI or lipopolysaccharide-sensitized HI injury. Mechanistically, CPAI attenuated HI-induced plasminogen activators and lipopolysaccharide/HI-induced nuclear factor-&kgr;B signaling, neuroinflammation, and blood–brain barrier permeability. Conclusions— Intranasal delivery of CPAI is an effective treatment of experimental HI brain injury of newborns. Clinical application of this experimental therapy merits further investigation.
Reconfigurable software for open architecture controllers

We present an architecture that supports reconfigurable software construction. In this architecture, the controller software consists of a set of well-defined components and a set of behavior specifications. Each component is modeled with event-based external interfaces, a control logic driver and service protocols. Behaviors of components and their integration are modeled as finite state machines and nested finite state machines. The behaviors of software can be specified in Control Plan programs and executed by control logic drivers at run-time. Such software supports executable code-level reconfiguration as well as remote behavioral reconfiguration. Reconfiguration with heterogeneous implementations and vendor-neutral products is also supported. Our evaluation of the motion control software for a milling machine controller demonstrated that the software constructed with this architecture has high reconfigurability and low development and maintenance costs.
Teaching citizenship in visual communication design : reflections of an Afrikaner

CITATION: Costandius, E. 2012. Teaching citizenship in visual communication design: reflections of an Afrikaner, in B. Leibowitz (ed.). Higher Education for the Public Good: views from the South. Stellenbosch: SUN MeDIA. 191-201. doi:10.18820/9781928357056/15.
Topology-aware clustering to achieve latency comparable to one-frame in multiplayer online games

The market for multiplayer online games is rapidly growing in concert with the growth in broadband Internet connection services. Since such games share a virtual space among many players, it is important to match players to a group so that they share low-latency connections with each other. This is because the latency between them affects the perceived quality of their experience. In this paper, we propose a topology-aware matching algorithm using players' geographical locations. We focus on synchronous multiplayer games that require a latency comparable to a delay of one frame. This paper describes the algorithm and its evaluation by simulations.
Reconstructing the house from the ad: Structured prediction on real estate classifieds

In this paper, we address the (to the best of our knowledge) new problem of extracting a structured description of real estate properties from their natural language descriptions in classifieds. We survey and present several models to (a) identify important entities of a property (e.g.,rooms) from classifieds and (b) structure them into a tree format, with the entities as nodes and edges representing a part-of relation. Experiments show that a graph-based system deriving the tree from an initially fully connected entity graph, outperforms a transition-based system starting from only the entity nodes, since it better reconstructs the tree.
Combined Beneficial Effect of Rasagiline on Motor Function and Depression in De Novo PD

ObjectivesTo investigate prokinetic and antidepressive effects of rasagiline in de novo Parkinson disease (PD). Materials and MethodsPatients with newly diagnosed PD with comorbid untreated depression were randomly assigned to rasagiline monotherapy 1 or 2 mg/d. Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale Part 2 (Activity of Daily Living) and Part 3 (Motor Function), and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) assessments were carried out by a blinded investigator in each patient at baseline and after 8 weeks of rasagiline treatment. ResultsBoth groups showed equal motor improvement at the end point. The improvements of HDRS score and activity of daily living were significantly more pronounced with rasagiline, 2 mg/d, than rasagiline, 1 mg/d (P = 0.0002). The treatment with rasagiline, 2 mg/d, improved symptoms in all HDRS core depression symptoms and specifically those not considered to be influenced by motor function: mood, guilt, psychic anxiety, and hypochondria. ConclusionOur results suggest that antidepressive effect seen in higher dosage of rasagiline may be not related to the motor improvement.
Conditional Random Field Based Named Entity Recognition in Geological Text

The paper describes about the development of a Named Entity Recognition (NER) system for Geological text using Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). The system makes use of the different contextual information of the words along with the variety of features that are helpful in predicting the various named entity (NE) classes. The NE tagged geological corpus was developed from the collection of scientific reports and articles on the geology of the Indian subcontinent has been used to build up the system. The training set consists of more than 2 lakh words and has been manually annotated with a NE tag set of seventeen tags. The system is able to recognize 17 classes of NEs with 75.8% Fmeasure.
Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis for the production of inorganic nanomaterials

As nanotechnology becomes increasingly important and ubiquitous, new and scalable synthetic approaches are needed to meet the growing demand for industrially viable routes to nanomaterial production. Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis or supercritical water hydrothermal synthesis (scWHS) is emerging as a versatile solution to this problem. The process was initially developed to take advantage of the tunable chemical and physical properties of superheated water to produce metal oxide nanoparticles by rapid nucleation and precipitation. The development of new mixing regimes and reactor designs has been facilitated by the modelling of reactor systems. These new reactor designs further exploit the properties of supercritical water to promote faster and more uniform mixing of reagent streams. The synthetic approach has been expanded beyond the metal oxide systems for which it was conceived, and now encompasses metal sulfides, metal phosphates, metal nanoparticles and metal–organic frameworks. In many of these cases, some degree of size and shape control can be achieved through careful consideration of both chemistry and reactor design. This review briefly considers the development of scWHS reactor technology, before highlighting some of our recent work in expanding the scope of this synthetic method to include a wide range of materials.
The formal method known as B and a sketch for its implementation

Kaijanaho, Antti-Juhani The formal method known as B and a sketch for its implementation / Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2002 154 p. Master’s Thesis This thesis provides a reconstruction of the B-method and sketches an implementation of its tool support. For background, this work investigates the field of formal methods in general and the relevance of formal methods to software engineering in particular. Formal (first-order) logic is also considered: both its development and important points relevant to formal methods. Automated reasoning, particularly its theoretical limits as well as unification and resolution, is discussed. The main part of this thesis is a systematic reconstruction of the B-method, starting from its version of untyped predicate calculus and typed set theory, continuing with the Generalized Substitution Language (GSL) and finishing with the Abstract Machine Notation (AMN). Specification, refinement and implementation of a simple example using the B-method is presented. Both validation and verification of specifications, refinements and implementations using the B-method is discussed. The thesis concludes with a report of the current state of the effort (by the author) to implement the tool support of the B-method, as the Ebba Toolset. Themain design decisions are discussed. The use of Unicode as the primary input encoding of AMN and GSL in Ebba is described. ACM
Paradigms for EÆcient Design of External Memory Algorithms

Data sets in large applications are often too massive to (cid:12)t completely inside the computer’s internal memory. The resulting input/output communication (or I/O) between fast internal memory and slower external memory (such as disks) can be a major performance bottleneck. We survey the state of the art in the design and analysis of external memory (or EM) algorithms, where the primary goal is to reduce the number of input/output (or I/O) operations, which tend to be a bottleneck in data-intensive applications. Two important avenues to reduce I/O costs are to exploit locality in EM algorithm design, in order to increase the amount of usefulinformation transferred in each I/O, and to take advantage of parallel disk drives, which can be accessed simultaneously. We examine several useful design paradigms and fundamental performance bounds for I/O performance.
Understanding The Security of Discrete GPUs

GPUs have become an integral part of modern systems, but their implications for system security are not yet clear. This paper demonstrates both that discrete GPUs cannot be used as secure co-processors and that GPUs provide a stealthy platform for malware. First, we examine a recent proposal to use discrete GPUs as secure co-processors and show that the security guarantees of the proposed system do not hold on the GPUs we investigate. Second, we demonstrate that (under certain circumstances) it is possible to bypass IOMMU protections and create stealthy, long-lived GPU-based malware. We demonstrate a novel attack that compromises the in-kernel GPU driver and one that compromises GPU microcode to gain full access to CPU physical memory. In general, we find that the highly sophisticated, but poorly documented GPU hardware architecture, hidden behind obscure close-source device drivers and vendor-specific APIs, not only make GPUs a poor choice for applications requiring strong security, but also make GPUs into a security threat.
I2NC: Intra- and inter-session network coding for unicast flows in wireless networks

In this work, we are interested in improving the performance of constructive network coding schemes in lossy wireless environments. We propose I2NC - an approach that combines inter-session and intra-session network coding and has two strengths. First, the error-correcting capabilities of intra-session network coding make our scheme resilient to loss. Second, redundancy allows intermediate nodes to operate without knowledge of the decoding buffers of their neighbors. Based only on the knowledge of the loss rates on the direct and overhearing links, intermediate nodes can make decisions for both intra-session (i.e., how much redundancy to add in each flow) and inter-session (i.e., what percentage of flows to code together) coding. Our approach is grounded on a network utility maximization (NUM) formulation of the problem. We propose two practical schemes, I2NC-state and I2NC-stateless, which mimic the structure of the NUM optimal solution. We also address the interaction of our approach with the transport layer. We demonstrate the benefits of our schemes through simulation in GloMoSim.
Statistical sentiment analysis performance in Opinum

The classification of opinion texts in positive and negative is becoming a subject of great interest in sentiment analysis. The existence of many labeled opinions motivates the use of statistical and machine-learning methods. First-order statistics have proven to be very limited in this field. The Opinum approach is based on the order of the words without using any syntactic and semantic information. It consists of building one probabilistic model for the positive and another one for the negative opinions. Then the test opinions are compared to both models and a decision and confidence measure are calculated. In order to reduce the complexity of the training corpus we first lemmatize the texts and we replace most named-entities with wildcards. Opinum presents an accuracy above 81% for Spanish opinions in the financial products domain. In this work we discuss which are the most important factors that have impact on the classification performance.
Power Line Communication Channel Modelling through Concatenated IIR-Filter Elements

Accurate power line channel models are an essential asset for the development of advanced power line communication systems. A physically based power line communication channel model is derived. Elements within a power line network, e.g. line discontinuities, branches, and loads, are modelled as IIR-filters. The transfer function of the overall channel is calculated by concatenating the transfer functions of the individual elements. In a second step time variation is modelled through impedance changes of network loads. It is shown that wide band load impedance measurements over the period of an AC mains-cycle can be easily integrated to deliver a deterministic cyclostationary power line channel model.