Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scalable socket buffer tuning for high-performance Web servers

Although many research efforts have been devoted to network congestion in the face of an increase in the Internet traffic, there is little discussion on performance improvements for endhosts. We propose a new architecture, called scalable socket buffer tuning (SSBT), to provide high-performance and fair service for many TCP connections at Internet endhosts. SSBT has two major features. One is to reduce the number of memory accesses at the sender host by using some new system calls, called simple memory-copy reduction (SMR) scheme. The other is equation-based automatic TCP buffer tuning (E-ATBT), where the sender host estimates 'expected' throughput of the TCP connections through a simple mathematical equation, and assigns a send socket buffer to them according to the estimated throughput. If the socket buffer is short, the max-min fairness policy is used. We confirm the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm through both a simulation technique and an experimental system. From the experimental results, we have found that our SSBT can achieve up to a 30% gain for Web server throughput, and a fair and effective usage of the sender socket buffer can be achieved.
Impact of the 13-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine on Pneumococcal Carriage Among American Indians

Background: Community-wide impact of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV) is conferred by reductions in vaccine-type nasopharyngeal carriage. We evaluated the impact of PCV13 on carriage of PCV13-specific types (1, 3, 5, 6A, 7F and 19A) and 6C among American Indians. Methods: A nasopharyngeal specimen was collected from community members of all ages between January 2010 and April 2012 (3 months before and 24 months after PCV13 introduction). Pneumococci were isolated by culture and serotyped using antisera. Monthly carriage prevalence and PCV13 coverage were calculated to identify the timing of vaccine impact relative to PCV13 introduction. Prevalence ratios (PRs) were used to compare PCV13-specific carriage before and in years 1 and 2 of PCV13 use. Coverage was calculated according to age and number of doses received. Results: 6645 participants (2859 <5 years and 3786 ≥5 years of age) provided 6628 specimens. A decline in PCV13-specific and type 6C carriage among children <5 years of age was observed 9 and 15 months after PCV13 introduction, respectively. Among underimmunized children, a decline in PCV13-specific carriage was observed 11 months after PCV13 introduction, when coverage in the community reached 58%. In year 2 of PCV13 use, PCV13-specific and 6C carriage were reduced by 60% and 70%, respectively (PCV13 specific: PR = 0.4, P < 0.001; 6C: PR = 0.3, P < 0.001) among children <5 years of age. The reduction in PCV13-specific carriage among those 5 to <8 years and 18+ years of age in year 2 of PCV13 use was not statistically significant. Conclusions: PCV13 reduced PCV13-specific and 6C carriage among children <5 years of age. Low pre-PCV13 carriage prevalence of PCV13-specific types limited confirming this reduction for adults.
Shadow brightness and shadow fraction relations with effective leaf area index: importance of canopy closure and view angle in mixedwood boreal forest

This research examines the impacts of varying canopy closure and view angle on relations of high-resolution digital camera shadow fraction and shadow brightness with mixedwood boreal forest effective leaf area index (LAIe). Results from linear regression analyses revealed weak and insignificant positive relations between shadow fraction and LAIe. Considerable scatter was observed in the relationship and was attributed to differences in canopy closure among plots, as only forest with greater than 80% closure showed a positive relationship between shadow fraction and LAIe. These results emphasized that gap size and frequency were important factors in determining the shadow fraction. Relations between shadow brightness and LAIe were significantly improved over those with the shadow fraction because of decreased data point scatter when closure was less than 80%. Shadow brightness was not adversely affected by canopy closure, while remaining sensitive to species composition. The association of shadow fraction with LAIe was understood to exist through links to the projected shadow area of tree crowns; however, this relation became unstable in more open canopies. With shadow brightness, surrogate information on LAIe was implicitly linked to differences in the transmission of light through deciduous and coniferous tree crowns. An evaluation of view angle geometry effects suggested that bidirectional reflectance impacts on the shadow fraction ‐ LAIe relations were strongest in the forward-scattering direction, but had less effect on regression analysis in the backscattering direction and at nadir.
Flue gas Hg measurements from coal-fired boilers equipped with wet scrubbers

The U.S. EPA has indicated they are considering additional SO2 and NOx emission reductions, and EPA is under a consent agreement to propose mercury reduction regulations by 2004 for the utility industry. The boiler manufacturers and the utility industry have developed improved combustion modification techniques to reduce NOx emissions. These advanced combustion modification techniques, plus selective catalytic reduction (SCR), offer the potential to reduce NOx emissions at reduced cost. Wet and dry FGD systems have been shown to reduce SO2 emissions by up to 95%. CONSOL has shown that conventional wet FGD and ESP systems can remove an average of 67±6% of the inlet mercury. These data show that utility boilers equipped with ESP-scrubber combinations are removing two-thirds of the mercury in the as-fired coal at no added cost. The mercury speciation data show that 80 to 95% of the oxidised mercury, as determined by the Ontario Hydro method, is removed by the scrubber. The average mercury material balance closure at the six plants was 103±8%. The mercury removed from the scrubber reported to the scrubber by-product. Standard leachate testing conducted on fixated and unfixated scrubber by-product from one test showed no mercury leaching. Mercury volatility was evaluated by heating the scrubber by-product 140°F for eleven weeks. After eleven weeks, no loss of mercury was reported. Based on these findings, there may be combinations of environmental control systems that can achieve significant SO2, NOx, and mercury reductions at lower cost than the conventional approach of three add-on processes FGD for SO2 control, selective catalytic reduction for NOx control, and carbon injection for mercury control.
Practical Aspects of microRNA Target Prediction

microRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous non-coding RNAs that control gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. These small regulatory molecules play a key role in the majority of biological processes and their expression is also tightly regulated. Both the deregulation of genes controlled by miRNAs and the altered miRNA expression have been linked to many disorders, including cancer, cardiovascular, metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, it is of particular interest to reliably predict potential miRNA targets which might be involved in these diseases. However, interactions between miRNAs and their targets are complex and very often there are numerous putative miRNA recognition sites in mRNAs. Many miRNA targets have been computationally predicted but only a limited number of these were experimentally validated. Although a variety of miRNA target prediction algorithms are available, results of their application are often inconsistent. Hence, finding a functional miRNA target is still a challenging task. In this review, currently available and frequently used computational tools for miRNA target prediction, i.e., PicTar, TargetScan, DIANA-microT, miRanda, rna22 and PITA are outlined and various practical aspects of miRNA target analysis are extensively discussed. Moreover, the performance of three algorithms (PicTar, TargetScan and DIANA-microT) is both demonstrated and evaluated by performing an in-depth analysis of miRNA interactions with mRNAs derived from genes triggering hereditary neurological disorders known as trinucleotide repeat expansion diseases (TREDs), such as Huntington’s disease (HD), a number of spinocerebellar ataxias (SCAs), and myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1).
"South Dakota's Dying to Know": a statewide survey about end of life.

OBJECTIVE To develop a baseline understanding of attitudes, advance planning, knowledge, and preferences about end-of-life (EOL) care among community-dwelling South Dakotans. METHODS Surveys were sent to 10,204 randomly selected households in South Dakota in August 2005, resulting in a 24.8% return rate (N = 2533). Data were entered into the computer for subsequent univariate (frequencies) and bivariate (using chi(2)) analysis. RESULTS Most respondents said preparation for EOL was very important, yet far fewer had actually taken steps to ensure their EOL wishes would be known or honored. Most people did not want artificial hydration/nutrition at EOL, preferred to die at home, and harbored misconceptions about pain; yet, most had not engaged in conversations with their physician, minister, or lawyer about these issues. While some adults were unfamiliar with hospice care, when provided with a definition, a majority indicated that they would want hospice care if they were dying and preferably in their own homes. CONCLUSION Disparities between what South Dakotans want at EOL and what actions they have taken to address those preferences challenge individuals, families, and professionals to engage in conversation to redress this inconsistency. Receptivity to physician-initiated EOL conversations suggests this talk be included with all patients, not just those who are elderly or at EOL. Data from this statewide study of community-dwelling adults provide information to better understand EOL preferences and to inform health policy and practice.
Jena Research Papers in Business and Economics Determining Crane Areas in Intermodal Transshipment Yards : The Yard Partition Problem

At rail-road transshipment yards, gantry cranes move containers from freight trains to trucks and vice versa. They constitute important entities in today's intermodal transportation systems. Real-world yards are often partitioned into several disjunct crane areas, so that crane interferences during container transshipment are avoided. In practice, the lengths of such crane areas are typically determined by simple rules of thumb, i.e., each crane receives an equally sized area, which might result in an unleveled division of labor among cranes and, thus, prolong train processing times. This paper provides an exact solution procedure which determines disjunct yard areas of varying size for multiple gantry cranes in polynomial runtime, so that the workload for a given pulse of trains is equally distributed among cranes. Furthermore, we investigate the potential acceleration of train processing as compared to equally sized areas in a yard simulation.
The Development of a National Census of the Health Information Workforce: Expert Panel Recommendations

BACKGROUND There is a need to develop a national census of the health information workforce to inform the planning and forecasting of the workforce and inform education and training needs. Yet, this raises a number of issues that need to be incorporated into the planning stage. This paper discusses the issues and recommendations for the development of a national health information workforce census and an Expert Panel's recommendations for how we should proceed. METHODS Nominated participants from Australia and New Zealand participated as Expert Panel members in focus groups to identify and discuss the issues. Recommendations were identified during the focus groups and documented for participant verification. These were then grouped into themes. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The themes of the issues and considerations identified in the focus groups were: Aim of the census; Census advertisement; Census delivery; Participants; Longitudinal study; Types of data elements; Data development and standards; Data ownership, access and governance; Global census; Dissemination of results.
Transmission-expansion planning using the DC model and nonlinear-programming technique

The paper presents a constructive heuristic algorithm (CHA) for solving directly the long-term transmission-network-expansion-planning (LTTNEP) problem using the DC model. The LTTNEP is a very complex mixed-integer nonlinear-programming problem and presents a combinatorial growth in the search space. The CHA is used to find a solution for the LTTNEP problem of good quality. A sensitivity index is used in each step of the CHA to add circuits to the system. This sensitivity index is obtained by solving the relaxed problem of LTTNEP, i.e. considering the number of circuits to be added as a continuous variable. The relaxed problem is a large and complex nonlinear-programming problem and was solved through the interior-point method (IPM). Tests were performed using Garver's system, the modified IEEE 24-Bus system and the Southern Brazilian reduced system. The results presented show the good performance of IPM inside the CHA.
Risk Factors for Hemoptysis in Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients from Southern China: A Retrospective Study

Clinical characteristics of tuberculosis (TB) patients from southern China with pulmonary tuberculosis hemoptysis (PTH) were analyzed retrospectively in order to improve the diagnosis of TB, reduce mortality and prevent the transmission of TB. A total of 1227 cases of pulmonary TB patients hospitalized in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and Guangzhou Chest Hospital from January to December of 2011 were analyzed retrospectively. 1) The male/female ratio of the 1227 tuberculosis cases was 2.15:1. There were 403 cases (32.8%) of PTH with a male/ female ratio of 3.03:1. 2) The ratio of patients with PTH to those with TB was designated as Rh. The Rh in the male group (36.2%, 303 cases) was higher than that in the female group (25.6%, 100 cases, risk ratio (RR) = 1.41, P ≤ 0.001). 3) The Rh in the elderly group (≥60 years old, 20.3%, 56 cases) was lower than that in the younger patients group (20 - 39 years old, 45.4%, 189 cases, RR = 2.51, P ≤ 0.001). 4) The Rh in initial treatment group (29.6%, 296 cases) was lower than that in the retreatment group (46.9%, 107 cases, RR = 1.58, P ≤ 0.001). 5) The Rh in sputum-positive TB patients (44.5%, 297 cases) was significantly higher than that in the smear-negative TB patients (18.9%, 106 cases, RR = 2.35, P ≤ 0.001). 6) The Rh of patients with lung lesions range 0.05). 7) The Rh of patients with cavities (51.8%, 309 cases) was higher than that of patients without cavities (14.9%, 94 cases, RR = 3.48, P ≤ 0.001). Male, young, retreated, sputum-positive TB patients and those with cavitary TB were more predisposed to PTH in southern China. TB patients with such characteristics should be sensitized and accorded good care.
Building a Diverse Document Leads Corpus Annotated with Semantic Relations

In these days, semantic analysis has been actively studied in natural language processing. For the study of semantic analysis, corpora with semantic annotations are essential. Although there are such corpora annotated on newspaper articles, there are various genres and styles, including linguistic expressions that are not found in newspaper articles. In this paper, we build a diverse document leads corpus annotated with semantic relations. To reduce the workload of annotators and annotate as many various documents as possible, we restrict the annotation target of each document to only the first three sentences. We have completed building a corpus of 1,000 documents and report the statistics of this corpus.
Foundations of ecological resilience

This title presents the evolution of resilience theory in seminal papers and commentary. Ecological resilience provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how complex systems adapt to and recover from localized disturbances like hurricanes, fires, pest outbreaks, and floods, as well as large-scale perturbations such as climate change. Ecologists have developed resilience theory over the past three decades in an effort to explain surprising and nonlinear dynamics of complex adaptive systems. Resilience theory is especially important to environmental scientists for its role in underpinning adaptive management approaches to ecosystem and resource management. "Foundations of Ecological Resilience" is a collection of the most important articles on the subject of ecological resilience - those writings that have defined and developed basic concepts in the field and help explain its importance and meaning for scientists and researchers. The book's three sections cover articles that have shaped or defined the concepts and theories of resilience, including key papers that broke new conceptual ground and contributed novel ideas to the field; examples that demonstrate ecological resilience in a range of ecosystems; and, articles that present practical methods for understanding and managing nonlinear ecosystem dynamics. "Foundations of Ecological Resilience" is an important contribution to our collective understanding of resilience and an invaluable resource for students and scholars in ecology, wildlife ecology, conservation biology, sustainability, environmental science, public policy, and related fields.
Low-latency near-capacity MIMO detection using parallel and hybrid QRD-MCMC algorithm

In this paper, we devise a near-optimal fast multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detector. Our proposed approach is a parallel architecture of QRD in tandem with Markov-chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) processing, referred to as hybrid parallel QRD-MCMC (HPQRD-MCMC). Simulation results show that for a 4 × 4 MIMO system, HPQRD-MCMC can reduce the detection delay by 45%, compared with some existing MCMC detectors, and the reduction is more for higher dimensional systems, without compromising the error probability performance. With stringent latency requirements, the proposed detector outperforms significantly existing MCMC detectors.
Observations of Earthquake Source Parameters at 2 km Depth in the Long Valley Caldera, Eastern California

To investigate seismic source parameter scaling and seismic efficiency in the Long Valley caldera, California, we measured source parameters for 41 earthquakes ( M 0.5 to M 5) recorded at 2 km depth in the Long Valley Exploratory Well. Borehole recordings provide a wide frequency bandwidth, typically 1 to 200–300 Hz, and greatly reduce seismic noise and path effects compared to surface recordings. We calculated source parameters in both the time and frequency domains for P and S waves. At frequencies above the corner frequency, spectra decay faster than ω3, indicating that attenuation plays an important role in shaping the spectra (path averaged Q p = 100–400, Q s = 200–800). Source parameters are corrected for attenuation and radiation pattern. Both static stress drops and apparent stresses range from approximately 0.01 to 30 MPa. Although static stress drops do not vary with seismic moment for these data, our analyses are consistent with apparent stress increasing with increasing moment. To estimate tectonic driving stress and seismic efficiencies in the region, we combined source parameter measurements with knowledge of the stress field and a Coulomb failure criterion to infer a driving stress of 40–70 MPa. Subsequent seismic efficiencies are consistent with McGarr's (1999) hypothesis of a maximum seismic efficiency of 6%.
Study on Applicability of Passive Infrared Thermography Analysis for Blistering Detection of Stone Cultural Heritage

This study focused on analysis condition and application method of the passive infrared thermography according to the direction and time to nondestructively detect the blistering zone of stone cultural heritage. As a result, the passive thermographic images showed different temperature characteristics by time because it sensitively reacts to air temperature, insolation and sunshine direction. In particular, the insolation and sunshine direction, which are periodically changed from 6:00 to 17:00, irregularly made surface temperature. In addition, surface temperature differences were brought on fresh zones and blistering zones except specific time since blistering causes erratic thermal transfer. As a result of examining the detection characteristics of blistering by time, the blistering was well detected between 9:00 and 10:00 when there was rapid increase in air temperature and insolation in all direction except the north. However, this study isn`t considered effects of four seasons because it is carried out in autumn, and the passive thermography has difficulty to analyze the quantitative area of blistering zone. Therefore, an additional study for synthetic consideration of the passive thermography analysis about four seasons and quantitative modeling of blistering zone using the active thermography are needed.
A fully integrated circuit for MEMS vibrating gyroscope using standard 0.25um CMOS process

This paper presents an all-in-one fully integrated circuit solution for a vibrating micro-electromechanical gyroscope system using standard 0.25um 1P5M low voltage CMOS process. The analog parts of the system include a trans-impedance amplifier (TIA) with adaptive gain control (AGC) for the resonator driving loop, a sigma-delta modulator with gain/offset trimming function for the Coriolis signal read-out and a modified all PMOS charge pump for the high DC voltage. The digital signal processing parts include a trimming/control logic circuit and an I2C interface. SOG-bulk micromachining and deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) are adopted to fabricate the gyroscope sensor element with high aspect-ratio sensing structure and high yield. The experimental results indicate that the noise floor achieves 0.051° / s/ √Hz and the scale factor is 7mV/ °/s of the proposed two chip MEMS gyroscope system.
Dyspnea, with a focus on cardiovascular diseases: A primary health care perspective

Aim: The overall objective of our thesis is to describe, identify, and quantify the essential aspects of dyspnea both as a stand-alone symptom and as a symptom in patients with a special focus on cardiovascular diseases in the primary health care. Introduction: Despite a high prevalence of dyspnea in the general population there is a small fraction of these individuals seeking medical advice in primary health care settings. A better understanding of this complex symptom of numerous chronic diseases requires more active research on dyspnea and suffering patients. Methods: Paper I (n=20) was a qualitative study with a content analysis of diaries provided to patients with dyspnea. They were asked to write down their experiences with the symptom over seven consecutive days. In paper II (n=1058), a community based study, we analyzed data from the Vara-Skövde Cohort, revealing the association between self-rated health (SRH) and diastolic dysfunction. In study III (n=89), a cross sectional study, we examined various scales for measuring dyspnea [i.e., Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Verbal Rating Scale (VRS), modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) dyspnea scale, and New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification scale] for quantifying dyspnea and relating it to patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) using the Short-Form 36 (SF-36) survey. In study IV, a longitudinal observational study, we studied a subpopulation from study III (patients with cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases) regarding changes in dyspnea and HRQoL after standard treatment. Results: The qualitative analysis of dyspnea (I) showed that dyspneic patients despite a considerable reduced HRQoL, found relief in social support, leisure activities and coping strategies in addition to drug therapy. Study II showed that SRH and Nt-proBNP (N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide) were associated with diastolic dysfunction. The significant associations