Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Informing algorithms for efficient scheduling of synchronizing threads on multiprogrammed SMPs

We present novel algorithms for efficient scheduling of synchronizing threads on multiprogrammed SMPs. The algorithms are based on intra-application priority control of synchronizing threads. We refer to such algorithms with the term "informing algorithms". Prerequisite for informing algorithms is the use of an efficient communication medium between the user- and kernel-level and the existence of in-kernel mechanisms that allow the applications to cooperate with the OS scheduler. The applications are given the opportunity to influence, in a non-intrusive manner, the scheduling decisions concerning their threads. We compare the performance of our informing algorithms with the performance of corresponding scheduler-oblivious algorithms under multiprogramming. We experimented on a small-scale, Intel x86-based SMP, running Linux, using both microbenchmarks and applications from the Splash-2 benchmark suite. The results substantiate the superiority of our approach and indicate that the philosophy of informing algorithms may be applicable in a wide range of algorithms and architectures.
An Adaptive Self-Organizing Protocol with Multiple Stages for Wireless Mesh Networks

Current service discovery protocols have a static protocol behavior with respect to their architecture and their message dissemination strategies. Protocols for ad-hoc networks use optimized flooding techniques, approaches for the Internet are server-centric. Wireless mesh networks are much more flexible in their way of connecting nodes as they can consist of a backbone of mesh routers and a number of mesh clients. We propose a service discovery protocol for wireless mesh networks which automatically adapts its operation mode (stage) dependent on the network situation. The stage considers link stability, resources of a node and the user's current context. In the default stage, nodes use flooding for message dissemination. In higher stages, more advanced backbone formation techniques are applied. We show that the service discovery operation can benefit from an adaptive protocol behavior.
The Québec Child and Adolescent Health and Social Survey: design and methods of a cardiovascular risk factor survey for youth.

BACKGROUND Although atherosclerosis begins in childhood, there are no recent Canadian data on cardiovascular risk factors in provincially or nationally representative samples of youth. OBJECTIVE To describe the design and methods of the 1999 Québec Child and Adolescent Health and Social Survey, which assessed the prevalence and distribution of risk factors in a representative sample of Québec youth. METHODS School-based, multistage, cluster sampling survey of youth aged nine, 13 and 16 years. Measures included height, weight, subscapular and tricipital skinfolds, blood pressure (measured with the Dinamap), a fasting blood draw for assessment of lipoproteins and glucose, an age-adapted youth questionnaire on lifestyles and a parent questionnaire. RESULTS One thousand two hundred sixty-seven, 1186 and 1160 subjects aged nine, 13 and 16 years, respectively, responded to the questionnaire and had height, weight, skinfold thickness and blood pressure measured (response proportions of 83%, 79% and 78% respectively); 783, 818 and 874 subjects of the same age agreed to the blood draw (response proportions of 52%, 55% and 59%, respectively). Comparisons of characteristics of participants and nonparticipants in the blood draw showed few differences. The mean relative difference between lipoprotein and glucose values obtained at the study laboratory and a reference method varied from -0.3% to 6.1%. Design effects for means and proportions varied from 1.0 to 1.8. CONCLUSION Despite its complexity, this survey was able to achieve a high level of precision for multiple measures. It will provide the most complete data on cardiovascular risk factors ever collected among children and adolescents in Canada.
Ontology-Based Product's Reputation Model

Different reputation models are used in the web in order to generate reputation values for products using uses' review data. Most of the current reputation models use review ratings and neglect users' textual reviews, because it is more difficult to process. However, we argue that the overall reputation score for an item does not reflect the actual reputation for all of its features. And that's why the use of users' textual reviews is necessary. In our work we introduce a new reputation model that defines a new aggregation method for users' extracted opinions about products' features from users' text. Our model uses features ontology in order to define general features and sub-features of a product. It also reflects the frequencies of positive and negative opinions. We provide a case study to show how our results compare with other reputation models.
Impact of aggregate interference on meteorological radar from secondary users

In this paper, we investigate the impact of aggregate interference in a secondary spectrum access system. Particularly, meteorological radar operating in 5.6 GHz band is considered to be a primary user. Secondary users are WLAN devices spreading in a large area which induce aggregate interference to the radar. We develop a mathematical model to derive the probability distribution function (PDF) of the aggregate interference. The derivation considers dynamic frequency selection (DFS) mechanism for the protection of the radar such that the transmission of each WLAN is regulated by an interference threshold. Numerical experiments are performed with various propagation environments and densities of WLAN devices. It is observed that the effect of aggregate interference is severe in a rural environment. The interference threshold for individual WLAN should be much lower than the maximum tolerable interference at the radar. Thus, only a limited number of WLANs can transmit at the same time. On the other hand, adverse effect of the aggregate interference is not shown in an urban environment, where up to 10 WLANs per square kilometer can use the radar spectrum without considering the aggregate interference. The framework discussed in this paper can readily be adapted to assess the aggregate interference for other types of radars.
Non-intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring with Feature Extraction from Higher Order Moments

A pattern recognition (PR) system is addressed for nonintrusive appliance load monitoring. For the effective recognition of two home appliances (specifically, an electric iron and a cook top), we consider a novel feature extraction method employing higher order moments of power signals from the appliances. Through simulation results, we have confirmed that the PR system with the features from the proposed higher order moment technique and kernel discriminant analysis can effectively separate the two appliances.
Development of a Substrate with Photo-Modulatable Rigidity for Probing Spatial and Temporal Responses of Cells to Mechanical Signals: A Dissertation

Topographical and mechanical properties of adhesive substrates provide important biological cues that affect cell spreading, migration, growth, and differentiation. The phenomenon has led to the increased use of topographically patterned and flexible substrates in studying cultured cells. However, these studies may be complicated by various limitations. For example, the effects of ligand distribution and porosity are affected by topographical features of 3D biological constructs. Similarly, many studies of mechanical cues are compounded with cellular deformation from external forces, or limited by comparative studies of separate cells on different substrates. Furthermore, understanding cell responses to mechanical input is dependent upon reliable measurements of mechanical properties. This work addresses each of these issues. To determine how substrate topography and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) affect cell shape and movement, I studied FAK-null (FAK -/-) and wild type mouse 3T3 fibroblasts on chemically identical polystyrene substrates with either flat surfaces or micron-sized pillars, I found that, compared to cells on flat surfaces, those on pillar substrates showed a more branched shape, an increased linear speed, and a decreased directional stability, which were dependent on both myosin-II and FAK. To study the dynamic responses to changes in substrate stiffness without other confounding effects, I developed a UV-modulatable substrate that softens upon UV irradiation. As atomic force microscopy (AFM) proved inadequate to detect microscale changes in stiffness, I first developed and validated a microsphere indentation method
Badania mikrostruktury i mikrosegregacji składu chemicznego warstw ze stopu Inconel 625 napawanych techniką CMT na podłoże ze stali 16Mo3

Streszczenie Celem pracy byla ocena mikrostruktury i skladu chemicznego napoin ze stopu Inconel 625 napawanych metodą CMT na podloze ze stali 16Mo3 oraz segregacji dendrytycznej (mikrosegregacji) pierwiastkow stopowych nastepującej podczas krzepniecia napoiny. Badania prowadzono za pomocą mikroskopu świetlnego Axio Imager MAT. M1m firmy Carl Zeiss oraz skaningowych mikroskopow elektronowych: mikroskopu nanoSEM 450 firmy FEI wyposazonego w detektor EDS firmy EDAX oraz mikroskopu Hitachi S-3500n wyposazonego w detektor EDS firmy noran. Wykazano, ze w wyniku mikrosegregacji zachodzącej w trakcie krzepniecia napoin rdzenie dendrytow bogatsze są w Ni, Fe i Cr, natomiast obszary miedzydendrytyczne w Mo i Nb. Podczas krzepniecia najsilniej segreguje niob, w mniejszym stopniu molibden, natomiast najmniej segreguje chrom. Pomimo, ze Inconel 625 jest stopem umacnianym roztworowo to w przestrzeniach miedzyden- drytycznych napoin tworzą sie fazy bogate w nb i Mo. Abstract The aim of this work was to investigate the microstruc- ture and chemical composition of Inconel 625 coatings on a 16Mo3 steel overlaid by the CMT method as well as mi- crosegregation of alloying elements during solidification of weld overlay. The investigations were carried out with an Axio Imag- er MAT. M1m light microscope (LM) manufactured by the Carl Zeiss company and with a FEI nanoSEM 450 and Hitachi S-3500n scanning electron microscopies (SEM). The investigation showed that microsegregation oc- curring during the weld overlay solidification makes the dendrite cores to be richer in Ni, Fe and Cr while the interdendritic areas in Mo and nb. niobium shows the strongest tendency to segregation during solidification; molybdenum tends to segregate less and chromium has the lowest tendency to segregation. Although Inconel 625 is a solid solution strengthened alloy, nb and Mo-rich phases are formed in the between dendrite arms of weld overlays.
Relative attributes

Human-nameable visual “attributes” can benefit various recognition tasks. However, existing techniques restrict these properties to categorical labels (for example, a person is ‘smiling’ or not, a scene is ‘dry’ or not), and thus fail to capture more general semantic relationships. We propose to model relative attributes. Given training data stating how object/scene categories relate according to different attributes, we learn a ranking function per attribute. The learned ranking functions predict the relative strength of each property in novel images. We then build a generative model over the joint space of attribute ranking outputs, and propose a novel form of zero-shot learning in which the supervisor relates the unseen object category to previously seen objects via attributes (for example, ‘bears are furrier than giraffes’). We further show how the proposed relative attributes enable richer textual descriptions for new images, which in practice are more precise for human interpretation. We demonstrate the approach on datasets of faces and natural scenes, and show its clear advantages over traditional binary attribute prediction for these new tasks.
Review on laser drilling I. Fundamentals, modeling, and simulation

High peak power lasers have been used for years for ablating matter. The most relevant application of this process is laser marking. Marking meets the demands of applications although the quality of ablation has potential to be further improved. However, the qualitative results of the ablation process especially for highly efficient removal of matter in the liquid phase like drilling have not met the standards of alternative processes—the latter is only the case in niches. On the other hand, the ablation by ultrafast lasers in the pulse regime of ps or below, which might meet the quality demands in terms of geometric precision, was too slow for economically feasible application because of the lack of average power. In fact, both process domains have been developed substantially and thus lead to a technological level which make them ready for industrial innovations. In a series of three articles on laser drilling—from fundamentals to application technology—the results of more than a decade of research and .
A TOBIT ANALYSIS OF PROPENSITY TO DISCONTINUE ADOPTION OF AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY AMONG FARMERS IN SOUTHWESTERN NIGERIA

While much work has been done on the factors determining the adoption of agricultural technologies, little research has been conducted on the factors that predispose farmers to discontinue the adoption of innovation. Following a survey of arable crop farmers in two states of southwestern Nigeria, econometric analysis was conducted in order to identify variables significant in the farmers’ discontinuance behaviour. The variables included in the study are Attitude, Extension visit, Feedback provision, Marketability and Input availability. Tobit model was estimated on the data collected during the 2002 growing season. From the estimation, significant variables leading to discontinuance of improved maize and cowpea varieties were identified. Foremost among them is extension visits.
Reconstruction of Craniomaxillofacial Bone Defects Using Tissue-Engineering Strategies with Injectable and Non-Injectable Scaffolds

Engineering craniofacial bone tissues is challenging due to their complex structures. Current standard autografts and allografts have many drawbacks for craniofacial bone tissue reconstruction; including donor site morbidity and the ability to reinstate the aesthetic characteristics of the host tissue. To overcome these problems; tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies have been developed as a potential way to reconstruct damaged bone tissue. Different types of new biomaterials; including natural polymers; synthetic polymers and bioceramics; have emerged to treat these damaged craniofacial bone tissues in the form of injectable and non-injectable scaffolds; which are examined in this review. Injectable scaffolds can be considered a better approach to craniofacial tissue engineering as they can be inserted with minimally invasive surgery; thus protecting the aesthetic characteristics. In this review; we also focus on recent research innovations with different types of stem-cell sources harvested from oral tissue and growth factors used to develop craniofacial bone tissue-engineering strategies.
Parameters optimization study and analysis of PID controller in buck converter based on fuzzy particle swarm optimization algorithm

In the field of power electronics, PID error control technology which does not need to establish accurate mathematical model of controlled system. And its' design of control system is simple and practical, so it is widely used in power electronics DC/DC converter. As the typical circuit of DC/DC converter, Buck converter has strong nonlinear and time-varying. The traditional PID controller parameter tuning method cannot satisfy the control performance. Therefore, this paper adopt fuzzy particle swarm optimization algorithm, the control parameters of PID controller in Buck converter is optimized and the optimization result is given in the ITAE performance index. Finally, the optimization of this algorithm is analyzed and compared with the simulation results.
ISMAC: An Intelligent System for Customized Clinical Case Management and Analysis

Clinical cases are primary and vital evidence for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) clinical research. A great deal of medical knowledge is hidden in the clinical cases of the highly experienced TCM practitioner. With a deep Chinese culture background and years of clinical experience, an experienced TCM specialist usually has his or her unique clinical pattern and diagnosis idea. Preserving huge clinical cases of experienced TCM practitioners as well as exploring the inherent knowledge is then an important but arduous task. The novel system ISMAC (Intelligent System for Management and Analysis of Clinical Cases in TCM) is designed and implemented for customized management and intelligent analysis of TCM clinical data. Customized templates with standard and expert-standard symptoms, diseases, syndromes, and Chinese Medince Formula (CMF) are constructed in ISMAC, according to the clinical diagnosis and treatment characteristic of each TCM specialist. With these templates, clinical cases are archived in order to maintain their original characteristics. Varying data analysis and mining methods, grouped as Basic Analysis, Association Rule, Feature Reduction, Cluster, Pattern Classification, and Pattern Prediction, are implemented in the system. With a flexible dataset retrieval mechanism, ISMAC is a powerful and convenient system for clinical case analysis and clinical knowledge discovery.
No Learner Left Behind: On the Complexity of Teaching Multiple Learners Simultaneously

We present a theoretical study of machine teaching in the setting where the teacher must use the same training set to teach multiple learners. This problem is a theoretical abstraction of the real-world classroom setting in which the teacher delivers the same lecture to academically diverse students. We define a minimax teaching criterion to guarantee the performance of the worst learner in the class. We prove that the teaching dimension increases with class diversity. For the classes of conjugate Bayesian learners and linear regression learners, respectively, we exhibit corresponding minimax teaching set. We then propose a method to enhance teaching by partitioning the class into sections. We present cases where the optimal partition minimizes aggregate teaching dimension while maintaining the guarantee of performance on all learners. Interestingly, we show personalized education (one learner per section) is not necessarily the optimal partition. Our results generalize machine teaching to multiple learners and offer insight on how to teach large classes.
"Between me and the computer": increased detection of intimate partner violence using a computer questionnaire.

STUDY OBJECTIVE The emergency department is a problem-focused environment in which routine screening for intimate partner violence (IPV) is difficult. We hypothesized that screening for IPV during computer-based health-risk assessment would be acceptable to patients and improve detection. METHODS We performed a descriptive study of IPV data collected during a controlled trial of computer-based health promotion in an urban hospital ED. Patients received computer-generated health advice, and physicians received patient risk summaries. Outcomes were patient disclosure and physician documentation of IPV and associated risks. RESULTS Two hundred forty-eight patients (69% female, 90% black, mean age 39 years) participated in a clinical trial of computer-based health promotion in the ED. Of 170 women, 53 (33%) disclosed emotional abuse, and 25 (15%) disclosed physical abuse. Of 78 men, 22 (29%) disclosed emotional abuse, and 5 (6%) disclosed physical abuse. Patients were also willing to self-report a history or concern of hurting someone close to them. This was true for 21 (14%) women and 15 (22%) men. Controlling for demographic factors, disclosures of victimization and perpetration were associated with multiple psychosocial risks. Computer screening resulted in chart documentation in 19 of 83 potential cases of IPV compared with 1 case documented in the group that received usual care. CONCLUSION Providing an opportunity for patients to confidentially self-disclose IPV has the potential to supplement current screening efforts and to allow providers to focus on assessment, counseling, and referral for those at risk. However, further measures will be needed to ensure that information gathered through computer screening is adequately addressed during the acute care or follow-up visit.
Cross-reactivity of antibodies specific for flagellar tektin and intermediate filament subunits

Monoclonal antibodies specific for each of the flagellar tektins were prepared and used to determine whether structures similar to tektin filaments are present in cells lacking cilia or flagella. This analysis was performed by double-label immunofluorescence microscopy of several cell lines and by immunoblots of protein fractions. Two of the four anti-tektin antibodies, the antibodies 3-7-1 and 3-10-1, which bind different epitopes of the C-tektin, label 3T3, HeLa, PtK2, and BHK-21 cells as well as myotubes. The antibody 3-7-1 stains intermediate filament structures in the cells and binds vimentin or desmin in preparations of cytoskeletal proteins; whereas the antibody 3-10-1 stains nuclear envelopes in the cells and binds lamin A and C in preparations of cytoskeletal proteins or nuclear lamina. Structural similarities between the C-tektin and intermediate filament proteins probably are extended to more than two epitopes because polyclonal antibodies anti-vimentin and anti-desmin bind to C-tektin. These polyclonal antibodies also bind to A-tektin. The cross-reaction of monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies binding to epitopes in tektin and intermediate filament components and the existence of a high content of alpha-helical structure in the tektin subunits (Linck, R. W., and G. L. Langevin, 1982, J. Cell Sci., 58:1-22) indicate that tektin and intermediate filaments are homologous in several parts of their structure.
Retrospective detection of malware attacks by cloud computing

As malware becomes pervasive and fast-evolving on the Internet, every computer linking to the outer world faces the risks of malware attacks. Therefore, it is important to not only detect malware as early as possible but also to determine which computer has been attacked. Among the various methods to find and trace the existence of malware, retrospective detection is promising one. Once a threat is identified, it allows one to determine exactly which host or users open similar files by searching historical information. In the past, the huge volume of historical information represents an insurmountable barrier to such traces. Fortunately, with the evolution of cloud computing technologies, this barrier can be broken. In this paper, we propose a new retrospective detection approach based on Portable Executable (PE) format file relationships. We implement our system in a Hadoop platform and use 18 real-world malware to do effective and efficient tests. Our results show that our system has a higher detection rate as well as a lower false positive rate than the famous Splunk tool. We also find that, although cloud computing is suitable for processing a small number of huge files, it has shortcomings in dealing with a large number of small files.