Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Some directed graph algorithms and their application to pointer analysis

This thesis is focused on improving execution time and precision of scalable pointer analysis. Such an analysis statically determines the targets of all pointer variables in a program. We formulate the analysis as a directed graph problem, where the solution can be obtained by a computation similar, in many ways, to transitive closure. As with transitive closure, identifying strongly connected components and transitive edges offers significant gains. However, our problem differs as the computation can result in new edges being added to the graph and, hence, dynamic algorithms are needed to efficiently identify these structures. Thus, pointer analysis has often been likened to the dynamic transitive closure problem. Two new algorithms for dynamically maintaining the topological order of a directed graph are presented. The first is a unit change algorithm, meaning the solution must be recomputed immediately following an edge insertion. While this has a marginally inferior worse-case time bound, compared with a previous solution, it is far simpler to implement and has fewer restrictions. For these reasons, we find it to be faster in practice and provide an experimental study over random graphs to support this. Our second is a batch algorithm, meaning the solution can be updated after several insertions, and it is the first truly dynamic solution to obtain an optimal time bound of O(v+e+ b) over a batch b of edge insertions. Again, we provide an experimental study over random graphs comparing this against the standard approach to topological sort. Furthermore, we demonstrate how both algorithms can be extended to the problem of dynamically detecting strongly connected components (i.e. cycles), thus achieving the first solutions which do not need to traverse the entire graph for half of all edge insertions. Several other new techniques for improving pointer analysis are also presented. These include difference propagation, which avoids redundant work by tracking changes in the points-to sets, and a novel approach to field-sensitive analysis of C. Finally, a detailed study of numerous solving algorithms, evaluating our techniques and algorithms against previous work, is contained herein. Our benchmark suite consists of many common C programs ranging in size from 15,000-200,000 lines of code.
Take this car and plug it [plug-in hybrid vehicles]

This paper presents hybrid cars with a bigger battery packs that can recharge from wall outlets. The resulting machines, referred to as plug-in hybrids, can be propelled exclusively by their electric motors for, in some cases, more than 30 kilometers without their gasoline engines even turning on. The advantages and disadvantages of these cars are discussed in this paper.
Challenges In Information Systems Procurement in the Public Sector

Abstract. Public procurement constitutes a large part of the market in many countries, and it has the potential of playing an important role in stimulating communities and serving policy goals. With this in mind the governments have set regulations for public procurement. Procurement of Information Systems is especially challenging due to the complexity of procuring unknown technology and the importance an information system has for different stakeholders in an organization. Public procurement of information systems (IS) and services provides several challenges to the stakeholders involved in the procurement processes. However, these are not well established or understood, and there is a knowledge gap that needs to be covered. This paper presents results from a Delphi study, which involved 46 experienced procurement managers, chief information officers, and vendor representatives in the Norwegian public sector. The participants identified 98 challenges related to IS procurement, and subsequently ranked the relative importance of the top issues. The study supports findings from previous research related to diverging stakeholder goals; challenges in balancing between objectives; in requirement specifications; and in too narrow cost focus. In addition to providing empirical confirmation of these previous propositions the study revealed new findings, such as benefits realization in IS procurement; coordinating and standardizing public procurement processes; complex and constraining government regulations; issues of technological integration and compatibility; and inter‑municipal cooperation. Developing clear requirements specifications stands out as critical for public sector officials. The results provide a rich overview of IS procurement challenges in the public sector in Norway, and may also give a good picture of challenges in other countries with similar procurement regulations.
Parental coping, depressive symptoms, and children's asthma control and school attendance in low-income, racially, and ethnically diverse urban families

ABSTRACT Objective: Low-income urban children of color are at elevated risk for poor asthma control. This cross-sectional study examined associations among parents' coping (primary control, secondary control, and disengagement), parental depressive symptoms, and children's asthma outcomes (asthma control and school attendance) in a predominantly low-income, racially/ethnically diverse sample of families. Methods: Parents (N = 78; 90% female) of children (33% female; 46% Black; 38% Latino) aged 5–17 years (M = 9.5 years) reported on their own coping and depressive symptoms, their child's asthma control, and full and partial days of school missed due to asthma. Results: Parents' secondary control coping (i.e., coping efforts to accommodate/adapt to asthma-related stressors) was negatively correlated, and disengagement coping (i.e. coping efforts to avoid/detach from stressors) was positively correlated, with their depressive symptoms. Secondary control coping was also correlated with fewer partial days of school missed. Primary control coping (i.e., coping efforts to change stressors) was not associated with depressive symptoms or asthma outcomes. Parents' depressive symptoms were also positively correlated with poorer asthma control and partial days of school missed. Regression models showed direct and indirect effects of secondary control and disengagement coping on asthma outcomes via depressive symptoms, after controlling for demographic factors. Conclusions: Parents' secondary control and disengagement coping are related to children's asthma outcomes. Secondary control coping may support parents' mental health and children's asthma control in low-income urban families.
The Influence of Task Complexity on Consumer Choice: A Latent Class Model of Decision Strategy Switching

The literature indicating that person-, context-, and task-specific factors cause consumers to utilize different decision strategies has generally failed to affect the specification of choice models used by practitioners and academics alike, who still tend to assume an utility maximizing, omniscient, indefatigable consumer. This article (1) introduces decision strategy selection, within a maintained compensatory framework, into aggregate choice models via latent classes, which arise because of task complexity; (2) it demonstrates that within an experimental choice task, the model reflects changing aggregate preferences as choice complexity changes and as the task progresses. The import of these findings for current practice, model interpretation, and future research needs is examined. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.
Contour Tracer for a Fast and Precise Edge-Line Extraction

Feature extraction algorithms delivering accurate results are computational intensive and cannot keep up with the demanded processing times on single processor systems in automated micropart assembly tasks. For this case an improved contour tracer for real-time edge-line extraction, using adaptive local thresholds, is introduced. In combination with an effective start point search, that concentrates on the strongest local contours, and a two stage robust corner detection a fast and precise edge-line extraction comes possible.
Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers

The decades before the Civil War saw the first secular efforts in history to remake society through reform. Reformers launched unprecedented campaigns reform criminals and prostitutes, to educate the deaf and the blind, guarantee women's rights, and abolish slavery. Our modern systems of free public schools, prisons, and hospitals for the mentally ill are all legacies of this era. Moralists and Modernizers tells the fascinating story of America's first age of reform-combining incisive portraits of leading reformers and movements with perceptive analysis of religion, politics, and society. Arguing that the reform impulse grew out of the era's peculiar mix of fear and hope, Steven Mintz shows that reform arose not only from fears of social disorder, family fragmentation, and widening class divisions, but also from a millennialist sense of possibility rooted in new religious and philosophical ideas. He then examines three distinct responses to pre-Civil War America's pressing social problems. Moral reform sought to create a Christian moral order using moral suasion. Social reform combatted poverty, crime, and ignorance through new institutions offering non-authoritarian forms of social control. Radical reform sought to regenerate American society by eliminating fundamental sources of inequality such as slavery and racial and sexual discrimination. In an epilogue, Mintz fits antebellum reform into the larger context of America's liberal tradition. Mintz concludes that America's pre-Civil War reformers were at once moral critics and cultural modernizers. As exponents of a distinctly modern set of values, reformers attacked outmoded customs, smoothed the transition from a preindustrial to an industrial order, and devised modern bureaucratic systems of criminal justice, public education, and social welfare. The first comprehensive account antebellum reform to appear in twenty years, Moralists and Modernizers is a rich and rewarding work of synthesis and interpretation which draws upon the most recent historical research. "This book charts a middle ground between those who regard reform as a form of class-based social control and those who stress reformers' benevolent intentions. It emphasizes the duality of antebellum reform, which blended impulses toward social and moral uplift with impulses to impose new codes of personal conduct, shape character, and construct new institutions of social control. "-from Moralists and Modernizers
Transforming Growth Factor-β1 SNPs: Genetic and Phenotypic Correlations in Progressive Kidney Insufficiency

Associations have been described between polymorphisms of cytokine and growth factor genes and susceptibility to, or progression of, an increasing number of diseases. TGF-β1 plays an important role in the pathogenesis of experimental and clinical glomerulosclerosis and tubulointerstitial fibrosis. In this study, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TGFβ1 gene were investigated as possible markers for the progression of chronic kidney failure (CKF). 145 Caucasian patients with CKF were screened for four TGFβ1 SNPs: T-509C in the promoter region; Arg25Pro and Leu10Pro in exon 1 and Thr263Ile in exon 5. There were significant differences between CKF patients and controls in allele frequencies of two of the SNPs, Leu10Pro (p = 0.038) and C-509T (p = 0.02) and in haplotype distributions (p = 0.0175), indicating an association with susceptibility to CKF. We also observed a significant association between progression of CKF and homozygosity for Arg25 (odds ratio 3.77, 95% confidence interval 1.57–9.04, p = 0.002). Homozygosity for Arg25 was also associated with severity of proteinuria at diagnosis (p = 0.038), plasma TGF-β1 protein levels (p = 0.01), and severity of glomerulosclerosis (p = 0.04). Homozygosity for -509T was associated with severity of proteinuria at diagnosis (p = 0.0017), level of renal tubular TGF-β1 immunostaining (p = 0.0006) and with severity of renal interstitial inflammatory cellular infiltration (p = 0.01). Tubular TGF-β1 immunostaining was significantly higher in biopsies with inflammatory cellular infiltration compared those without inflammation (p = 0.0048). There was a significant difference in haplotype distributions between CKF patients with progressive, as opposed to non-progressive disease (p = 0.0484). TGFβ1 SNPs may be useful prognostic indicators for the progression of CKF.
Serotypes, Antibiotic Susceptibilities, and Multi-Locus Sequence Type Profiles of Streptococcus agalactiae Isolates Circulating in Beijing, China

Background To investigate the serotypes, antibiotic susceptibilities, and multi-locus sequence type (MLST) profiles of Streptococcus agalactiae (S. agalactiae) in Beijing to provide references for the prevention and treatment of S. agalactiae infections. Methods All isolates were identified using the CAMP test and the latex-agglutination assay and serotyped using a Strep-B-Latex kit, after which they were assessed for antibiotic susceptibility, macrolide-resistance genes, and MLST profiles. Results In total, 56 S. agalactiae isolates were identified in 863 pregnant women (6.5%). Serotypes Ia, Ib, II, III, and V were identified, among which types III (32.1%), Ia (17.9%), Ib (16.1%), and V (14.3%) were the predominant serotypes. All isolates were susceptible to penicillin and ceftriaxone. The nonsusceptiblity rates measured for erythromycin, clarithromycin, azithromycin, telithromycin, clindamycin, tetracycline, and levofloxacin were 85.7%, 92.9%, 98.2%, 30.4%, 73.2%, 91%, and 39.3%, respectively. We identified 14 sequence types (STs) for the 56 isolates, among which ST19 (30.4%) was predominant. The rate of fluoroquinolone resistance was higher in serotype III than in the other serotypes. Among the 44 erythromycin-resistant isolates, 32 (72.7%) carried ermB. Conclusion S. agalactiae isolates of the serotypes Ia, Ib, III, and V are common in Beijing. Among the S. agalactiae isolates, the macrolide and clindamycin resistance rates are extremely high. Most of the erythromycin-resistant isolates carry ermB.
Developing a Triple Transgenic Cell Line for High-Efficiency Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus Infection

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is one of the most devastating pathogens in the swine industry worldwide. Due to the lack of robust cell lines and small animal models, the pathogenesis of PRRSV infection and mechanism for protective vaccination are still not yet well understood. To obtain useful cell lines, several groups have attempted to construct different transgenic cell lines with three PRRSV receptors: CD163, CD169, and CD151. The results showed that CD163 is essential for PRRSV entry into target cells and replication, and both CD169 and CD151 play key roles during PRRSV infection. However, their interplay and combined effect remains unclear. In this study, we generated transgenic BHK-21 derived cell lines co-expressing different combinations of the three receptors, which were transfected with CD163 alone, or the combination of CD163 and CD169, or the combination of CD163 and CD151, or the combination of CD163, CD169, and CD151 using the PiggyBac transposon system. Our results showed that the synergistic interaction among the three receptors was important to improve the susceptibility of cells during PRRSV infection. Through a series of comparable analyses, we confirmed that the cell line co-expressing triple receptors sustained viral infection and replication, and was superior to the current cell platform used for the PRRSV study, MARC-145 cells. Moreover, we found that PRRSV infection of the transgenic cell lines could trigger IFN-stimulated gene responses similar to those of porcine alveolar macrophages and MARC-145 cells. In summary, we developed a stable transgenic cell line susceptible to PRRSV, which may not only provide a useful tool for virus propagation, vaccine development, and pathogenesis studies, but also establish the foundation for small animal model development.
An Integrated Traffic and Pedestrian Model-Based Vision System

The paper describes a novel integrated vision system in which two autonomous visual modules are combined to interpret a dynamic scene. The first module employs a 3D model-based scheme to track rigid objects such as vehicles. The second module uses a 2D deformable model to track non-rigid objects such as people. The principal contribution is a novel method for handling occlusion between objects within the context of this hybrid tracking system. The practical aim of the work is to derive a scene description that is sufficiently rich to be used in a range of surveillance tasks. The paper describes each of the modules in outline before detailing the method of integration and the handling of occlusion in particular. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of the system in a dynamic outdoor scene involving cars and people.
New solvable model of polymer-chain adsorption at a surface.

We solve exactly for the polymer adsorption transition in the two- and three-dimensional directed self-avoiding walk models, by employing a novel transfer-matrix approach. The behavior of the fraction of adsorbed monomers at the threshold and in the high-coverage regime is described in detail, as is the phase diagram of the adsorption transition.
A Simple Neural Network Based Countermeasure for Replay Attack

Speaker verification has been applied broadly, but the characteristic of being spoofed easily is one of the obstructions for expanding its applications. Among various form of spoofing, replay is an efficient method, even humans can not easily classify the replay audio from the legal ones. In this paper, CNN-RNN neural network is proposed to detect replay spoofing, furthermore, simpler architectures are investigated by pruning and retraining. Experiments evaluated with accuracy, FAR and FRR showed that the proposed approach can work effectively for detecting replay spoofing.
A large-scale epidemic of hand, foot and mouth disease associated with enterovirus 71 infection in Japan in 1978.

An epidemic of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) took place throughout Japan in 1978. A total of 36,301 cases were reported and clinical symptoms were mostly typical of HFMD. Most patients were under five years of age. This communication deals with the summarized results of epidemiological informa tion from various laboratories on the incidence of HFMD. Enterovirus 71 is known to be associated mainly with central nervous system (CNS) diseases in USA (Schmidt et al., 1974; Deibel et al., 1975), Australia
Crystal structure of HLA‐A*2402 complexed with a telomerase peptide

HLA‐A*2402 is the most commonly expressed HLA allele in oriental populations. It is also widely expressed in the Caucasian population, making it one of, if not the most abundant HLA I types. In order to study its structure in terms of overall fold and peptide presentation, a soluble form of this HLA I (α1, α2, α3 and β2m domains) has been expressed, refolded and crystallized in complex with a cancer‐related telomerase peptide (VYGFVRACL), and its structure has been solved to 2.8 Å resolution. The overall structure of HLA‐A*2402 is virtually identical to other reported peptide‐HLA I structures. However, there are distinct features observable from this structure at the HLA I peptide binding pockets. The size and depth of pocket B makes it highly suitable for binding to large aromatic side chains, which explains the high prevalence of tyrosine at peptide position 2. Also, for HLA binding at peptide position 5, there is an additional anchor point, which allows the proximal amino acids to protrude out, providing a prominent feature for TCR interaction. Finally, pocket F allows the anchor residue at position 9 to be bound unusually deeply within the HLA structure.
Are Social Networking Sites Making Health Behavior Change Interventions More Effective? A Meta-Analytic Review

The increasing popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) has drawn scholarly attention in recent years, and a large amount of efforts have been made in applying SNSs to health behavior change interventions. However, these interventions showed mixed results, with a large variance of effect sizes in Cohen’s d ranging from −1.17 to 1.28. To provide a better understanding of SNS-based interventions’ effectiveness, a meta-analysis of 21 studies examining the effects of health interventions using SNS was conducted. Results indicated that health behavior change interventions using SNS are effective in general, but the effects were moderated by health topic, methodological features, and participant features. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.
Light Front Nuclear Physics: Toy Models, Static Sources and Tilted Light Front Coordinates

The principles behind the detailed results of a light-front mean field theory of finite nuclei are elucidated by deriving the nucleon mode equation using a simple general argument, based on the idea that a static source in equal time coordinates corresponds to a moving source in light front coordinates. This idea also allows us to solve several simple toy model examples: scalar field in a box, (1+1)-dimensional bag model, three-dimensional harmonic oscillator and the Hulthen potential. The latter provide simplified versions of momentum distributions and form factors of relevance to experiments. In particular, the relativistic correction to the mean square radius of a nucleus is shown to be very small. Solving these simple examples suggests another more general approach--the use of tilted light front coordinates. The simple examples are made even simpler. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.