Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal End-Case Partitioners and Placers for Standard-Cell Layout

We develop new optimal partitioning and placement codes for end-case processing in top-down standard-cell placement. Such codes are based on either enumeration or branch-and-bound, and are invoked for instances below prescribed size thresholds (e.g., < 30 cells for partitioning, or < 10 cells for placement). Our optimal partitioners handle tight balance constraints and uneven cell sizes transparently, while achieving substantial speedups over single FM starts. Optimal cutsizes for small instances (between 10 and 35 movable nodes) are typically found to be at least 40% smaller than what FM will achieve in several starts. Our optimal placers use branch-and-bound to achieve substantial speedups over even Gray code based enumeration. In the context of a top-down global placer, the right combination of optimal partitioners and placers can achieve up to an average of 10% wirelength reduction and 50% CPU time savings for a set of industry testcases. The paper concludes with directions for future research.
The Crystal Structure of D-Threonine Aldolase from Alcaligenes xylosoxidans Provides Insight into a Metal Ion Assisted PLP-Dependent Mechanism

Threonine aldolases catalyze the pyridoxal phosphate (PLP) dependent cleavage of threonine into glycine and acetaldehyde and play a major role in the degradation of this amino acid. In nature, L- as well as D-specific enzymes have been identified, but the exact physiological function of D-threonine aldolases (DTAs) is still largely unknown. Both types of enantio-complementary enzymes have a considerable potential in biocatalysis for the stereospecific synthesis of various β-hydroxy amino acids, which are valuable building blocks for the production of pharmaceuticals. While several structures of L-threonine aldolases (LTAs) have already been determined, no structure of a DTA is available to date. Here, we report on the determination of the crystal structure of the DTA from Alcaligenes xylosoxidans (AxDTA) at 1.5 Å resolution. Our results underline the close relationship of DTAs and alanine racemases and allow the identification of a metal binding site close to the PLP-cofactor in the active site of the enzyme which is consistent with the previous observation that divalent cations are essential for DTA activity. Modeling of AxDTA substrate complexes provides a rationale for this metal dependence and indicates that binding of the β-hydroxy group of the substrate to the metal ion very likely activates this group and facilitates its deprotonation by His193. An equivalent involvement of a metal ion has been implicated in the mechanism of a serine dehydratase, which harbors a metal ion binding site in the vicinity of the PLP cofactor at the same position as in DTA. The structure of AxDTA is completely different to available structures of LTAs. The enantio-complementarity of DTAs and LTAs can be explained by an approximate mirror symmetry of crucial active site residues relative to the PLP-cofactor.
Privacy preserving picture sharing: enforcing usage control in distributed on-line social networks

The problem of usage control, which refers to the control of the data after its publication, is becoming a very challenging problem due to the exponential growth of the number of users involved in content sharing. While the best solution and unfortunately the most expensive one to cope with this particular issue would be to provide a trusted hardware environment for each user, in this paper we address this problem in a confined environment, namely online social networks (OSN), and for the particular picture sharing application. In current OSNs, the owner of an uploaded picture is the only one who can control the access to this particular content and, unfortunately, other users whose faces appear in the same picture cannot set any rule. We propose a preliminary usage control mechanism targeting decentralized peer-to-peer online social networks where control is enforced thanks to the collaboration of a sufficient number of legitimate peers. In this solution, all faces in pictures are automatically obfuscated during their upload to the system and the enforcement of the obfuscation operation is guaranteed thanks to the underlying privacy preserving multi-hop routing protocol. The disclosure of each face depends on the rules the owner of the face sets when she is informed and malicious users can never publish this content in clear even if they have access to it.
Empirical essays on uncertainty and fiscal shocks

english): This thesis investigates the macroeconomic effects of uncertainty and fiscal shocks, particularly focusing on the role of nonlinearities in the transmission mechanisms. Chapter 1 investigates the effects of global uncertainty shocks in open economies and explores the role that different levels of country risk exposure might have in the transmission of the shock through an I-VAR. We find evidence for the presence of nonlinear effects of global uncertainty shocks on economic activity. Chapter 2 evaluates the evolution over time of fiscal spending multipliers in the U.S. through a TVP-VAR, particularly focusing on their size at the ZLB. Estimated spending multipliers display substantial variability over the investigated period. The effects of changes in government spending on output are larger in periods with passive monetary policy stance and at the ZLB. Chapter 3 estimates time-dependent finance-uncertainty multipliers in the U.S. using a TVP-VAR. Our results point to substantial variations in the financeuncertainty multipliers over the investigated period. Uncertainty shocks always have recessionary effects, although with time-varying persistence, and those effects are amplified in periods of financial distress. Abstract (italiano): Questa tesi analizza gli effetti macroeconomici di shock di incertezza e di shock di politica fiscale, con particolare attenzione alla presenza di non linearità nei meccanismi di trasmissione. Il primo capitolo esplora gli effetti di shock di incertezza globale in economia aperta e il ruolo che diversi livelli di esposizione al rischio possono avere nella trasmissione dello shock, utilizzando un modello I-VAR. I risultati delle stimeitaliano): Questa tesi analizza gli effetti macroeconomici di shock di incertezza e di shock di politica fiscale, con particolare attenzione alla presenza di non linearità nei meccanismi di trasmissione. Il primo capitolo esplora gli effetti di shock di incertezza globale in economia aperta e il ruolo che diversi livelli di esposizione al rischio possono avere nella trasmissione dello shock, utilizzando un modello I-VAR. I risultati delle stime indicano la presenza di effetti non lineari di shock di incertezza globali sull’economia reale. Il secondo capitolo si propone di valutare l’evoluzione del tempo dei moltiplicatori fiscali negli Stati Uniti, attraverso un TVP-VAR, con particolare attenzione al valore dei moltiplicatori allo ZLB. I moltiplicatori stimati mostrano notevole variabilità durante il periodo considerato. Variazioni della spesa pubblica hanno effetti maggiori sull’attività economica in periodi di politica monetaria passiva e allo ZLB. Il terzo capitolo analizza l’impatto delle condizioni finanziare sulla trasmissione di shock di incertezza, attraverso un TVP-VAR. I risultati mostrano sostanziale variabilità nel tempo degli effetti di shock di incertezza, condizionatamente allo stato dei mercati finanziari. Uno shock di incertezza ha sempre effetti recessivi, tuttavia tali effetti sono amplificati durante periodi di turbolenze finanziarie. Firma dello studente
A cross layer Design to Enhance Throughput for Multimedia Streaming over Mobile Ad hoc Networks

The main objective of this paper is to propose a novel method for enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) of multimedia applications in wireless adhoc networks. The enhancement is achieved by implementing the Connectionless Light Weight Protocol (UDPLite) in transport layer that supports multimedia applications. In addition to implementing the transport layer protocol, parameters of MAC layer have also been considered to propose an approach that achieves a reduction in delay, jitter and increase in Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). This Proposed method achieves 9% improvement in reduction of delay and 5% improvement in PSNR as compared to the conventional UDP Protocol.
CELL-MEDIATED CYTOTOXICITY DURING REJECTION AND ENHANCEMENT OF ALLOGENEIC SKIN GRAFTS IN RATS

Cell-mediated cytotoxicity (CMC) in spleens and lymph nodes of allografted rats was determined by release of 51Cr from labeled target cells incubated with aggressor lymphoid cells. CMC was first detected in grafted adult rats on day 5, peaked on days 7 and 8, and declined rapidly to background levels by days 9 to 11. In allografted neonates and in cyclophosphamide-treated or neonatally thymectomized adults CMC was a fraction of that observed in normal adult rats. Enhancing antibodies deferred in vivo peak activity of CMC in allografted neonates for 3–4 days, and blocked in vitro the action of aggressor lymphocytes by binding to target cells. Enhancing antibodies had no effect on the cytotoxicity of aggressor cells, but horse antibodies to rat thoracic duct cells inhibited in vitro CMC of aggressor cells.
Effects of a Universally Free, In-Classroom School Breakfast Program: Results from the Second Year of the Maryland Meals for Achievement Evaluation. Interim Report.

Noting that many children in the United States are not well nourished despite the recent economic boom, the state of Maryland began the Maryland Meals for Achievement (MMFA) program, a demonstration project to see if providing a classroom breakfast free to all students can improve student nutrition and academic achievement. This interim report summarizes and explains findings from the MMFA program. The MMFA project was implemented in six Maryland school districts in fall 1998, with comparison schools selected from the same district as participating schools. Evaluation data were obtained from surveys, school records, and individual interviews with administrators, teachers and other school staff, parents, and students. The findings indicated that the classroom breakfast program was associated with improved student achievement, behavior, and attention, and decreased school absences and complaints of hunger. The overall conclusion of the report is that the Maryland Meals for Achievement has led to modest but educationally important improvements for participating students. Two appendices contain overheads summarizing the findings and the data collection instruments. (KB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Effects of a Universally Free, In-Classroom School Breakfast Program Results from the Second Year of the Maryland Meals for Achievement Evaluation Interim Report March 25 2000 (with a new preface and notes on student hunger and nutrition) 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RES URCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) J. Michael Murphy, Ed.D. Emunah Rankin, B.A. Kelly Feeney, B.A. Leigh Kenney, B.A. Ron Kleinman, M.D. Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Medical School 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE
On the Fly Query Entity Decomposition Using Snippets

AbstractOne of the most important issues in Information Retrieval is inferringthe intents underlying users’ queries. Thus, any tool to enrich or to bettercontextualized queries can proof extremely valuable. Entity extraction,provided it is done fast, can be one of such tools. Such techniques usuallyrely on a prior training phase involving large datasets. That training iscostly, specially in environments which are increasingly moving towardsreal time scenarios where latency to retrieve fresh informacion should beminimal. In this paper an ‘on-the-ﬂy’ query decomposition method isproposed. It uses snippets which are mined by means of a nave statisticalalgorithm. An initial evaluation of such a method is provided, in additionto a discussion on its applicability to diﬀerent scenarios. 1 Introduction One of the main purposes in Web Information Retrieval is helping users tofulﬁll their information needs. However, most of the time, the main problemis determining the users’ intent. For instance, is s/he looking for a particularresult? A comparison between some results? Does the input provide any clueabout the goal or the intent behind the query? Has any other user issued thesame querybefore? Nonetheless to say, interpreting the users’ input is a complextask that can be improved by using a number of diﬀerent techniques.Thus, the content the users provide to the IR system can be analyzed (e.g.the queries they submit to a search engine). This way it is possible to opti-mize the results or to provide some feedback which the users can asses in theirinformation retrieval process (e.g. a search engine could provide more focusedresults or query suggestions). In the late 1990s seminal studies analyzing Web user’s information retrievalprocess (e.g. [6] or [? ]) reported important diﬀerences from users in other in-formation retrieval scenarios. Those papers also included a categorization of
Intercultural differences: varieties of address strategies in a British academic setting

Address forms are fundamental to defining and negotiating human relationships. Their use enables people to identify themselves as part of a social group, to express common ground or degree of social distance with their interlocutor, to evaluate their addressee, and establish the kind of speech event they are in. Terms of address are closely linked to one’s cultural value system. Due to migration, travel, new technologies and globalisation, languages and their address systems are increasingly in contact (Clyne, 2009). At a university setting people from different parts of the world meet and express their social standing, ethnic and cultural belonging, and other aspects of themselves through an exchange of address forms. This work investigates the norms of address used by students when addressing the teaching staff at the University of Huddersfield in England. It examines these norms as professed by students and considers possible salient variables such as cultural background, gender and length of time as a student in this setting which may affect students’ use of address forms. The work discusses the norms with a particular focus on the similarities and differences in those employed by British and non-British students. The analysis is also focused on the interpersonal implications of address forms for phenomena such as politeness, appropriateness, and face. The discussion is carried out over topics such as students’ motivation and preferences in address forms, the implied meaning of these address forms, and the academic staff’s evaluation of the students and their preferences in address terms.
Involvement of Organic Cation Transporter-3 and Plasma Membrane Monoamine Transporter in Serotonin Uptake in Human Brain Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

The serotonin (5-HT) uptake system is supposed to play a crucial part in vascular functions by “fine-tuning” the local concentration of 5-HT in the vicinity of 5-HT2 receptors in vascular smooth muscle cells. In this study, the mechanism of 5-HT uptake in human brain vascular smooth muscle cells (HBVSMCs) was investigated. [3H]5-HT uptake in HBVSMCs was Na+-independent. Kinetic analyses of [3H]5-HT uptake in HBVSMCs revealed a Km of 50.36 ± 10.2 mM and a Vmax of 1033.61 ± 98.86 pmol/mg protein/min. The specific serotonin re-uptake transporter (SERT) inhibitor citalopram, the specific norepinephrine transporter (NET) inhibitor desipramine, and the dopamine transporter (DAT) inhibitor GBR12935 inhibited 5-HT uptake in HBVSMCs with IC50 values of 97.03 ± 40.10, 10.49 ± 5.98, and 2.80 ± 1.04 μM, respectively. These IC50 values were 100-fold higher than data reported by other authors, suggesting that those inhibitors were not blocking their corresponding transporters. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction results demonstrated the presence of mRNA for organic cation transporter (OCT)-3 and plasma membrane monoamine transporter (PMAT), but the absence of OCT-1, OCT-2, SERT, NET, and DAT. siRNA knockdown of OCT-3 and PMAT specifically attenuated 5-HT uptake in HBVSMCs. It is concluded that 5-HT uptake in HBVSMCs was mediated predominantly by a low-affinity and Na+-independent mechanism. The most probable candidates are OCT-3 and PMAT, but not the SERT.
Collaborating & being together: influence of screen size and viewing distance during video communication

Through videoconferencing, people search to interact and communicate with their remote friends or family as they were together in the same place. The influence of form variables such as screen size has been mainly investigated on the sense of physical presence (presence as transportation) in virtual environment and in television area, but less attention has been paid to how these factors can influence the sense of co-presence in videoconferencing. In addition, preferred viewing distance is well known to be a key parameter in order to convey a sense of presence and enjoyment when people watch television, but there is currently no data regarding preferred viewing distance in videoconferencing. This paper presents a user study which explores the influence of screen size on the participant's sense of co-presence and on their preferred viewing distance. The main results of this study revealed that users preferred to get closer to the screen when they communicated in videoconferencing than when they watched TV program. Our study suggests that screen size has an effect on the preferred viewing distance and on the participant's sense of co-presence, with higher scores of co-presence with larger screen.
Gestural and audio metaphors as a means of control for mobile devices

This paper discusses the use of gesture and non-speech audio as ways to improve the user interface of a mobile music player. Their key advantages mean that users could use a player without having to look at its controls when on the move. Two very different evaluations of the player took place: one based on a standard usability experiment (comparing the new player to a standard design) and the other a video analysis of the player in use. Both of these showed significant usability improvements for the gesture/audio-based interface over a standard visual/pen-based display. The similarities and differences in the results produced by the two studies are discussed
Multiple UAVs collision avoidance trajectory coordination using distributed receding horizon optimization

To the problem of multiple UAVs collision avoidance trajectory coordination in the same aerial space, a distributed receding horizon optimization model was established. Then, a state prediction based trajectory coordination algorithm was presented. Several simulation results show that our method can bring a within-network collision avoidance capability for multiple UAVs, and multiple UAVs can coordinate with each other effectively on condition that there are communication link between two conflict UAVs.
Self organizing classifiers and niched fitness

Learning classifier systems are adaptive learning systems which have been widely applied in a multitude of application domains. However, there are still some generalization problems unsolved. The hurdle is that fitness and niching pressures are difficult to balance. Here, a new algorithm called Self Organizing Classifiers is proposed which faces this problem from a different perspective. Instead of balancing the pressures, both pressures are separated and no balance is necessary. In fact, the proposed algorithm possesses a dynamical population structure that self-organizes itself to better project the input space into a map. The niched fitness concept is defined along with its dynamical population structure, both are indispensable for the understanding of the proposed method. Promising results are shown on two continuous multi-step problems. One of which is yet more challenging than previous problems of this class in the literature.
Content-Adaptive Display Power Saving for Internet Video Applications on Mobile Devices

Backlight scaling is a technique proposed to reduce the display panel power consumption by strategically dimming the backlight. However, for mobile video applications, a computationally intensive luminance compensation step must be performed in combination with backlight scaling to maintain the perceived appearance of video frames. This step, if done by the Central Processing Unit (CPU), could easily offset the power savings via backlight dimming. Furthermore, computing the backlight scaling values requires per-frame luminance information, which is typically too energy intensive to compute on mobile devices. In this article, we propose Content-Adaptive Display (CAD) for two typical Internet mobile video applications: video streaming and real-time video communication. CAD uses the mobile device’s Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) rather than the CPU to perform luminance compensation at reduced power consumption. For video streaming where video frames are available in advance, we compute the backlight scaling schedule using a more efficient dynamic programming algorithm than existing work. For real-time video communication where video frames are generated on the fly, we propose a greedy algorithm to determine the backlight scaling at runtime. We implement CAD in one video streaming application and one real-time video call application on the Android platform and use a Monsoon power meter to measure the real power consumption. Experiment results show that CAD can save more than 10% overall power consumption for up to 55.7% videos during video streaming and up to 31.0% overall power consumption in real-time video calls.
H2T: A Simple Hadoop-to-Twister Translator for Cloud Computing

MapReduce has become one of the most popular programming model for big data analysis in cloud systems due to its simplicity for implementing data parallel applications. There are several platforms for users to develop their applications based on MapReduce framework such as Hadoop and Twister. Hadoop is one of the most popular runtime systems for MapReduce applications and supported by various organizations, however, the original design for Hadoop did not propose an iterative feature efficiently which is required for many scientific applications. Twister, another system for Iterative MapReduce, is introduced and designed to facilitate iterative applications based on MapReduce framework. It has shown that Twister has the better performance than Hadoop on some applications such as Pair wise Distance Calculation (Smith Waterman Gotoh distance). Automatic translations between two program languages in cloud platforms can help developers move their applications from one cloud to anther cloud without changing codes. In this paper, we propose a simple Hadoop-to-Twister translator named H2T which is designed for converting simple Hadoop applications into Twister applications. The experimental results show that translated Twister applications is much faster than original Hadoop applications.
A PCBM Electron Transport Layer Containing Small Amounts of Dual Polymer Additives that Enables Enhanced Perovskite Solar Cell Performance

A polymer/PCBM hybrid electron transport layer is reported that enables high‐performance perovskite solar cells with a high power conversion efficiency of 16.2% and with negligible hysteresis. Unlike previous approaches of reducing hysteresis by thermal annealing or fullerene passivation, the success of our approach can be mainly attributed to the doping of the PCBM layer using an insulating polymer (polystyrene) and an amine‐containing polymeric semiconductor named PFNOX.