Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experience with Multi-resource Aware Fair Sharing in Highly Heterogeneous Private Clouds

This work addresses the problem of guaranteeing user-to-user fairness in absence of money. This is a typical problem in private and/or scientific clouds. In such systems, the computational power is not allocated with respect to a user ability to pay. Instead, users of the system are handled according to a resource provider's inner policy. Frequently, this policy somehow incorporates fairness. In this paper we show how fairness can be handled in private cloud systems where both resources and users' requests are highly heterogeneous. The solution is represented by a user-ordering function that defines fair ordering of users' requests with respect to their recent resource utilization, supporting multi-resource aware fair sharing. Unlike other solutions, our approach is less sensitive to the heterogeneity of resources and users' requests. Notably, scheduler decisions do not influence the resulting priority of a user. We discuss our positive experience with a working implementation of this fair sharing mechanism which is used in the Czech national cloud and grid operator Meta Centrum.
Time for a Change: An Exploration of Information Systems Discontinuance

A substantive body of research has sought to understand the adoption, implementation, and use of information systems. In contrast, the literature offers only limited insight into phenomena related to the end of the information systems lifecycle including decisions to discontinue the use of these systems. Such decisions can have a dramatic impact on firm performance and on measures of system success such as return on investment. Thus, the proposed research seeks to elucidate the factors driving organizational decisions to discontinue their use of information systems. A two phase study is proposed that consists of a series of semi-structured interviews with IS decision makers followed by a survey study. Interviews are being guided by a research framework that posits a fundamental tension between forces for change that encourage discontinuance and opposing forces of inertia.
Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications Cloning, Purification, Crystallization and Preliminary Structural Studies of Penicillin V Acylase from Bacillus Subtilis

Penicillin acylase proteins are amidohydrolase enzymes that cleave penicillins at the amide bond connecting the side chain to their-lactam nucleus. An unannotated protein from Bacillus subtilis has been expressed in Escherichia coli, purified and confirmed to possess penicillin V acylase activity. The protein was crystallized using the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method from a solution containing 4 M sodium formate in 100 mM Tris–HCl buffer pH 8.2. Diffraction data were collected under cryogenic conditions to a spacing of 2.5 A ˚. The crystals belonged to the orthorhombic space group C222 1 , with unit-cell parameters a = 111.0, b = 308.0, c = 56.0 A ˚. The estimated Matthews coefficient was 3.23 A ˚ 3 Da À1 , corresponding to 62% solvent content. The structure has been solved using molecular-replacement methods with B. sphaericus penicillin V acylase (PDB code 2pva) as the search model.
Opportunistic Programming: Writing Code to Prototype, Ideate, and Discover

The input AGC and reference (REF) voltages are converted to currents and provided as differential inputs to a current amplifier. The current amplifier scales these currents proportional to absolute temperature. The translinear principle is used to realize the current amplifier and ensures linearity of the differential output currents. These currents are then converted to voltages by resistor elements. The result is applied to a simple differential pair that produces two AGC control currents that follow the hyperbolic tangent function. The two AGC control currents are equal when the AGC input is three-fourths the reference value. The overall gain response is well modeled by a second order function and is self-limiting at high gain values.
Expression levels of a filament-specific transcriptional regulator are sufficient to determine Candida albicans morphology and virulence

Candida albicans, the major human fungal pathogen, undergoes a reversible morphological transition from single yeast cells to pseudohyphal and hyphal filaments (elongated cells attached end-to-end). Because typical C. albicans infections contain a mixture of these morphologies it has, for many years, been difficult to assess the relative contribution of each form to virulence. In addition, the regulatory mechanisms that determine growth in pseudohyphal and hyphal morphologies are largely unknown. To address these questions we have generated a C. albicans strain that can be genetically manipulated to grow completely in the hyphal form under non-filament-inducing conditions in vitro. This was achieved by inducing high-level constitutive expression of UME6, a recently identified filament-specific transcriptional regulator of C. albicans hyphal extension. We show that high-level UME6 expression significantly increases hyphal formation and promotes virulence in a mouse model of systemic candidiasis. Our results strongly suggest that shifting the morphology of a C. albicans population toward the hyphal form, and/or increasing hyphal-specific gene expression, during the course of infection is sufficient to improve virulence potential. We also demonstrate that lower levels of UME6 expression specify growth largely in the pseudohyphal form and that increasing UME6 levels is sufficient to cause cells to gradually shift from pseudohyphal to hyphal morphology. In addition, we show that UME6 levels differentially induce the expression of several known filament-specific transcripts. These findings suggest that a common transcriptional regulatory mechanism functions to specify both pseudohyphal and hyphal morphologies in a dosage-dependent manner.
A genetic-evolutionary model to simulate population dynamics in the Calangos game

Calangos is an under development educational game based on the fauna and flora of the desert-like field of the sand dunes in the middle São Francisco River, located within the Caatinga biome in Brazil. One of the player's goals is to manage the behavior of species of lizards that inhabit this biome, with consequences to their ecology and evolution. For the development of the game a genetic-evolutionary model, embedded in a simulator, is proposed. This model will be used to simulate predator-prey dynamics based on the Evolutionary Biology and Ecology literature. The objective of this paper is to introduce the genetic-evolutionary model embedded in the simulator and present some key experimental findings. It will be shown that under certain environmental conditions lizard populations are only able to survive if allowed to evolve. The results will also show the main causes of death (malnutrition, dehydration, predation or aging), the diet preferences (vegetables or insects) of lizards and their relationship with specific environmental conditions.
Assignment1 of a UDP-glucose:ceramide glucosyltransferase gene (Ugcg) to mouse chromosome band 4B3 by in situ hybridization

Glycosphingolipids (GSLs) are a class of membrane lipids composed of a hydrophobic ceramide and a hydrophilic sugar chain. The lipids are believed to play important roles in a variety of cellular processes including cell recognition, cell growth, development and differentiation. UDP-glucose ceramide glucosyltransferase (ceramide glucosyltransferase, EC 2.4.1.80) catalyzes the first glycosylation step of GSL synthesis, the transfer of glucose from UDP-Glc to ceramide which yields glucosylceramide. The enzyme is also an important factor in the control of the intracellular level of ceramide which is now regarded as a second messenger. We previously cloned human (Ichikawa et al., 1996) and mouse (Ichikawa et al., 1998) ceramide glucosyltransferase cDNA, and localized the human gene to 9q31 (Ichikawa et al., 1997). However, the mouse gene has not yet been mapped. In this paper we report the chromosome mapping of the mouse ceramide glucosyltransferase gene Ugcg. Fig. 1. FISH mapping with the ceramide glucosyltransferase genomic fragment probe to 4B3. The ceramide glucosyltransferase signal (1) and chromosome 4 telomeric region signal (2) on metaphase chromosomes. Chromosomes were counterstained by DAPI.
Electrical characteristic fluctuation of 16 nm MOSFETs induced by random dopants and interface traps

In this paper, we estimate the influences of random dopants (RDs) and interface traps (ITs) using experimentally calibrated 3D device simulation on electrical characteristics of high-κ / metal gate CMOS devices. Statistically random devices with 2D ITs between the interface of silicon and HfO2 film as well as 3D RDs inside the device channel are simulated. Fluctuations of threshold voltage and on-/off-state current for devices with different effective oxide thickness of insulator film are analyzed and discussed. The engineering findings significantly indicate that RDs and ITs govern characteristics, respectively, are statistically correlate to each other and RDs dominate device's variability, compared with the influence of ITs; however, the influence degree varies with IT's number, density and position. The effect of RDs and ITs on device characteristic should be considered together properly. Notably, the position of ITs and RDs results in very different fluctuation in spite of the same number of ITs and RDs.
A Framework for Comparing Software Processes off the Shelf ( SPOTS )

A Software-Process-Off-The-Shelf (SPOTS) is a software process which can be bought and used in a software developing organization. Choosing the SPOTS that fulfills the needs of an organization is a difficult task and errors may have serious and expensive consequences. This paper introduces the concept of SPOTS, discusses the problem of their choice and provides the requirements and the general structure of a framework for describing SPOTSs in the perspective of their comparison. In particular, the paper discusses how Process Modeling Languages play an important role in the building of a framework for SPOTS comparison.
Efficient and Reliable MPEG-4 Multicast MAC Protocol for Wireless Networks

Multicasting is the transmission of data to a group of nodes identified by a single destination address. Furthermore, multicasting is considered as an appropriate transmission method for multimedia services. Multimedia applications are expected to become more prevalent over mobile ad hoc networks in the near future. Therefore, achieving reliability in multimedia communications is an important task. Video compression technologies are about reducing and removing redundant video data so that a digital video file can be effectively sent over a network. With modern compression standards, such as Moving Picture Expert Group 2 (MPEG-2), MPEG-4, and H.264, which is also known as advanced video coding MPEG-4 part 10, losses of different frames have different impacts on video quality. In this paper, we propose a leader-based reliable multicast medium-access control layer protocol for multimedia applications to enhance video quality. We present a Markov chain model and numerical formulation of our proposed protocol. Simulation results show that our proposed method is better than other protocols in terms of the number of decodable frames, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and video quality.
Learning to Rank Similar Apparel Styles with Economically-Efficient Rule-Based Active Learning

Increasingly, people define and express themselves in online social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, by uploading photos showing the clothes they wear. As a result, such online social networks are becoming major sources of inspiration, with users looking for others with similar clothing style. In this paper, we propose a novel learning to rank (L2R) algorithm for finding similar apparel style given a query image. L2R algorithms use a labeled training set to generate a ranking model that can later be used to rank new query results. These training sets, however, are costly and laborious to produce, requiring human annotators to assess the relevance of candidate images in relation to a query. Active learning algorithms are able to reduce the labeling effort by selectively sampling an unlabeled set of images and choosing the subset that maximizes a learning function's effectiveness. Specifically, our proposed L2R algorithm employs an association rule active sampling algorithm to select very small but effective training sets. Further, our algorithm operates on visual (e.g., image descriptors) and textual (e.g., comments associated with the image) elements, in a way that makes it able (i) to expand the query image (for which only visual elements are available) with textual elements, and (ii) to combine multiple elements, being visual or textual, using basic economic efficiency concepts. We conducted a systematic evaluation of the proposed algorithm using every-day photos collected from Instagram, and we show that our L2R algorithm reduces by two orders of magnitude the need for labeled images, and still improves upon the state-of-the-art models by 4-8% in terms of mean average precision.
ASBESTOS EXPOSURE: FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH EXCESS CANCER AND RESPIRATORY DISEASE MORTALITY

A cohort of 1075 men who completed their working lifetimes with an asbestos company, worked at a facility in the United States, and retired with a company pension during the period 1941--67 was updated for deaths through 1973. The average length of employment was 25 years, and all had been exposed to asbestos dust. Respiratory cancer and pneumoconiosis-pulmonary fibrosis mortalities were examined in relation to cumulative dust exposure and to other factors after taking into account cumulative dust exposure. Men who worked in the production of asbestos cement pipe exhibited a higher risk of respiratory cancer, as did men with some crocidolite asbestos exposure. Because these two groups overlap, we could not be certain that crocidolite asbestos was responsible for the increased risk. Men working in general plant maintenance displayed a striking lack of deaths due to pneumoconiosis-pulmonary fibrosis, as compared with production workers and with maintenance personnel assigned to specific departments. Five mesothelioma deaths were observed at age 65 and over. Three of these deaths occurred during the period 1970--3.
NEAR-INFRARED GALAXY COUNTS AND EVOLUTION FROM THE WIDE-FIELD ALHAMBRA SURVEY

The ALHAMBRA survey aims to cover 4 deg2 using a system of 20 contiguous, equal width, medium-band filters spanning the range 3500 Å–9700 Å plus the standard JHKs filters. Here we analyze deep near-IR number counts of one of our fields (ALH08) for which we have a relatively large area (0.5 deg2) and faint photometry (J = 22.4, H = 21.3, and K = 20.0 at the 50% of recovery efficiency for point-like sources). We find that the logarithmic gradient of the galaxy counts undergoes a distinct change to a flatter slope in each band: from 0.44 at [17.0, 18.5] to 0.34 at [19.5, 22.0] for the J band; for the H band 0.46 at [15.5, 18.0] to 0.36 at [19.0, 21.0], and in Ks the change is from 0.53 in the range [15.0, 17.0] to 0.33 in the interval [18.0, 20.0]. These observations together with faint optical counts are used to constrain models that include density and luminosity evolution of the local type-dependent luminosity functions. Our models imply a decline in the space density of evolved early-type galaxies with increasing redshift, such that only 30%–50% of the bulk of the present day red ellipticals was already in place at z ∼ 1.
A POS-based fuzzy word clustering algorithm for continuous speech recognition systems

Using word base n-gram language models in continuous speech recognition systems is so prevalent. For using this type of language models, we should extract them from large corpora. Since Persian corpora are not rich, therefore the extracted language models are not credible. For this reason, most researchers extract class n-grams instead of finding word n-grams. In this research a new idea for fuzzy word clustering is represented that each word can be assigned to more that one class. The Fuzzy c-mean algorithm is used for our clustering method and we have examined its various parameters of it. Finally, this algorithm was applied on 20000 most frequent Persian words extracted from ldquoPersian Text Corpusrdquo. The extracted language models are evaluated by perplexity criterion and the results show that a considerable reduction in perplexity has been achieved. Also, the results of this language model were evaluated on speaker independent continuous speech recognition system and improved the system accuracy.
Post‐training excitotoxic lesions of the dorsal hippocampus attenuate generalization in auditory delay fear conditioning

An abundance of evidence indicates a role for the dorsal hippocampus (DH) in learning and memory. Pavlovian fear conditioning provides a useful model system in which to investigate DH function because conditioning to polymodal contextual cues, but generally not to discrete unimodal cues, depends upon the integrity of the DH. There is some suggestion that the hippocampus may be involved in generalization to discrete auditory stimuli following conditioning, but the available literature offers conflicting results regarding the nature of hippocampus involvement. The present experiments were designed to address a role for the DH in auditory generalization following delay fear conditioning. Rats were trained with two or 16 trials of delay fear conditioning and subsequently given a neurotoxic lesion of the DH or sham surgery. Upon recovery, they were tested for fear conditioned responding to the auditory stimulus they were trained with, as well as generalized responding to a novel auditory stimulus. Sham animals showed substantial generalization to the novel stimulus when trained with two or 16 trials. However, lesion animals showed much less generalization (better discriminative performance) to the novel stimulus following 16 conditioning trials while still showing substantial fear conditioned freezing to the trained stimulus. A second experiment showed that this effect was not the result of a non‐associative response to the novel stimulus. We conclude that, with extended training, animals become capable of discriminating between trained and novel stimuli but another hippocampus‐dependent process maintains generalized responding.
Percepção dos usuários quanto aos benefícios no processo do trabalho e dificuldades de uso na utilização de um sistema ERP: uma abordagem a nível individual

As organizacoes contemporâneas vem aderindo de forma crescente novas tecnologias que sejam capazes de fornecer ferramentas suficientes para auxiliar em seus processos, desde operacionais, ate estrategicos. Um dos desafios organizacionais tem sido encontrar um aplicativo que seja capaz de fornecer essas informacoes integradas com confiabilidade e qualidade dando suporte a tomada de decisao. Com a importância do fator humano para controlar a tecnologia, o presente trabalho tem por objetivo diagnosticar os beneficios proporcionados no processo de trabalho e as dificuldades no uso da tecnologia nas atividades dos profissionais de contabilidade. Para atingir o objetivo proposto, fez-se uso de dados coletados a partir de uma survey on-line. O questionario foi respondido pelos usuarios do software Kaipora, obtendo ao final da pesquisa 32 questionarios validos. O desenvolvimento do trabalho ocorreu em duas fases, sendo no primeiro momento, a analise do processo de trabalho individual atraves dos constructos produtividade, inovacao, controle gerencial e satisfacao dos clientes, com base em Antonelli (2011) e Torkzadeh e Doll (1999). A segunda fase foi a aplicacao do modelo TAM - Technology Acceptance Model (Modelo de Aceitacao de Tecnologia) atraves do constructo facilidade de uso percebida baseada nos estudos de Davis (1986, 1989) e Antonelli (2011). A analise se demonstrou promissora revelando o Controle Gerencial e a Produtividade como maiores proporcionadores de contribuicoes substantivas e com menores indices no quesito Inovacao. No entanto, deixou a desejar quanto aceitacao da tecnologia, com uma media total bastante baixa, o que demonstra que ocorre relutância na adaptacao do aplicativo pelos “novos” usuarios e que ainda, novas modificacoes podem vir a prejudicar os beneficios proporcionados pelo software.
A Krylov subspace multistage decomposition of the transmit Wiener filter

Besides methods based on eigensubspaces, the reduced-rank multistage Wiener filter (MSWF) is a well-known approach for the approximation of the Wiener filter, the optimum linear receive filter in the minimum mean square error sense, in a lower-dimensional subspace in order to reduce computational complexity and enhance performance in case of low sample support. Analogous, the transmit Wiener filter (TxWF) is the optimum linear filter at the transmitter side where the receiver is kept simple since it applies only a scalar weighting. In this paper, we use the principles of the MSWF to derive a multistage decomposition of the TxWF which we denote transmit multistage Wiener filter (TxMSWF). In addition, we will show that the reduced-rank TxMSWF can be seen as an approximation of the TxWF in a Krylov subspace. Simulation results reveal that the TxMSWF achieves near optimum performance for relatively low rank. Thus, it is an interesting alternative to low complexity approximations of the TxWF in eigensubspaces
Increased expression in Escherichia coli of a synthetic gene encoding human somatomedin C after gene duplication and fusion

A synthetic gene coding for human somatomedin C (SMC) was inserted into an Escherichia coli plasmid vector that contains the bacteriophage lambda pL promoter. Intracellular accumulation of the gene product after induction of the promoter was found to be low. A 200-fold greater yield was obtained with a similar plasmid containing two translationally fused copies of the SMC gene. A series of such tandem genes truncated at their 3' ends were generated with nuclease Bal 31. These gave intermediate expression levels that correlated with the expected sizes of their gene products. Comparison of RNAs extracted from cells containing either the monomer or tandem SMC gene constructions showed that there was no significant difference in expression at the transcriptional level. Pulse-chase experiments demonstrated that the tandem SMC protein was far more stable than the monomer SMC product.
A CAVE based 3d immersive interactive city with gesture interface

This thesis presents a system that visualizes 3D city data and supports gesture interactions in a fully immersive Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). To facilitate more natural interactions in this immersive virtual city, novel techniques are proposed for operations such as object selection, object manipulation, navigation and menu control. These operations form a basis of interactions for most Virtual Reality (VR) applications. The proposed techniques are predominantly controlled using gestures. We also propose the use of pattern recognition methods, specifically a Hidden Markov Model, to support real time dynamic gesture recognition and demonstrate its use for menu control in VR applications. Qualitative and quantitative user studies are conducted to evaluate the proposed techniques. The results of the user studies demonstrate that the interaction techniques for object selection and manipulation are measurably better than traditional techniques. The results also show that the proposed gesture based navigation and menu control techniques are preferred by experienced users. These findings can guide future user interface design in immersive environments.