Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Architecture , Evolution , and Cloning of Linux Device Drivers : A Case Study

In last few years, a lot of research has been done in the areas of software architecture, evolution, and cloning. All these areas have been studied separately, and case studies and experiments have been performed on large systems. The target of our study, in these areas, have been device drivers, as a part of a large system Linux operating system. The analysis of many relatively small and separate systems (device drivers), within the context of a large system (operating system), has given us new results on dependencies among and within these areas, and how they affect each other. In this paper, we present results obtained in these areas, together with relationships and dependencies among them. All the results are obtained using widely available reverse engineering tools, which provide the picture of their usability in an industrial setting.We first present results obtained within all three areas separatively, together with the evaluation of the tools and techniques used to obtain them, and then how these results fit together.
Virulent clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis grow rapidly and induce cellular necrosis but minimal apoptosis in murine macrophages

In this study, we investigated the ability of four clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis representing a range of virulence for their capacity to grow in bone marrow‐derived macrophages. The rate of growth of each of the isolates in macrophages reflected their known virulence, but the most virulent isolates strongly induced production of the cytokine tumor necrosis factor α. A key difference, however, was the degree of cell cytotoxicity observed with the more virulent strains ater several days in culture. Staining of cell monolayers for DNA fragmentation indicative of apoptosis showed that this was minimal and only evident to any degree in macrophages infected with the most virulent strains. In contrast, electron microscopy revealed damage of macrophages consistent with cell necrosis. These results suggest that rapid intracellular growth rate and induction of necrotic cell death within host macrophages are virulence factors of M. tuberculosis in the early stages of bacterial infection. They further imply that infected cell apoptosis, regarded as a defense mechanism or cross‐priming mechanism, plays a minimal role.
Expression of Ki 67 and CD 105 as Proliferation and Angiogenesis Markers in Salivary Gland Tumors

Angiogenesis, development of new blood vessels from previous blood vessels, is necessary for tumor growth and metastasis. During recent years, a lot of effort has been put into identifying markers of angiogenesis (Meng et al., 2012). CD105 is not only a marker that has an important role in angiogenesis (Nassiri et al., 2011) but also it is essential for proliferation of endothelial cells and stimulates active phase of angiogenesis (Goumans et al., 2003). CD105 is a membranous homodimer protein with a molecular weight of 180 KDa, and the gene for this protein is located on chromosome 9 which is expressed on the cell surface (Dallas et al., 2008). There are two isoforms of protein with the capacity of binding to Transforming Growth Factor β (TGF-β) that differ in the cytoplasmic amino acid composition. Most of CD105 functions are likely to be associated with TGF-β signaling , however in some processes it is independent of TGF-β signaling (Levi et al., 2011) . Endothelial cells of blood vessels are the main source of CD105 (Duff et al., 2003). Other cells including vascular smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts, macrophages, can also
Software development methodologies: A perspective of different strategies linked to a similar goal

Software development initially used traditional methodologies which have been in the mainstream until the advent of agile methodologies. It is often thought that as traditional methods would be eventually replaced by new methods, it still remains the closest link to a naturally progressive route although the mind-set wants to get rid of the old and get in with the new. But it is not the replacement that is the variable to control. It has to be a dynamic approach which marries the two which is a hybrid methodology where a combination of the old and the new coexist. Interestingly a new strategy also seems to surface which looks at synergies and past pace scenarios, all within the realm of successful software project deliveries. The views and accepted norms from previous research papers are analysed with discussions provided on whether to discourage or encourage the practitioner from a perspective based on what works with and when a certain amount of caveat is imposed.
Unusually High Predation on Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus) by Female Leopards (Panthera pardus) in the Waterberg Mountains, South Africa

Leopards do not preferentially favour baboons as prey, but they are considered the primary predators of baboons across Africa. Even in areas where baboons are abundant, their contribution to leopard diet seldom exceeds 5% of biomass. It is suggested that the extreme aggressiveness of baboons, group vigilance and their high mobility when escaping may limit leopard predation. Male baboons are particularly aggressive, and retaliation often leads to the death of the leopard. However, evidence suggests that leopards may learn to catch and kill certain dangerous prey. This study reports predation on chacma baboons by 3 female leopards on a private game reserve in the Waterberg Mountains of South Africa. Potential leopard feeding sites were identified using global positioning system (GPS) location clusters obtained from GPS collars. Over a 5-month period, we investigated 200 potential leopard feeding sites and located 96 leopard feeding/kill sites. Baboons constituted 18.7% of the leopards’ biomass intake. The majority of baboons preyed upon were adults and 70% of the kills were diurnal. In terms of the measured variables, there were no significant differences in the way the leopards preyed upon baboons, compared to the rest of the prey species.
Novel biphenyl ester derivatives as tyrosinase inhibitors: Synthesis, crystallographic, spectral analysis and molecular docking studies

Biphenyl-based compounds are clinically important for the treatments of hypertension and inflammatory, while many more are under development for pharmaceutical uses. In the present study, a series of 2-([1,1'-biphenyl]-4-yl)-2-oxoethyl benzoates, 2(a-q), and 2-([1,1'-biphenyl]-4-yl)-2-oxoethyl pyridinecarboxylate, 2(r-s) were synthesized by reacting 1-([1,1'-biphenyl]-4-yl)-2-bromoethan-1-one with various carboxylic acids using potassium carbonate in dimethylformamide at ambient temperature. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies revealed a more closely packed crystal structure can be produced by introduction of biphenyl moiety. Five of the compounds among the reported series exhibited significant anti-tyrosinase activities, in which 2p, 2r and 2s displayed good inhibitions which are comparable to standard inhibitor kojic acid at concentrations of 100 and 250 μg/mL. The inhibitory effects of these active compounds were further confirmed by computational molecular docking studies and the results revealed the primary binding site is active-site entrance instead of inner copper binding site which acted as the secondary binding site.
Graphic Representation of Judgmental Information

When people learn a complex skill like computer text editing they are learning a set of goals and the plans for accomplishing those goals. In this experiment we examined the structure and development of simple text-editing goals and plans. Long interkeystroke times were found to be associated with plan boundaries. The longest times were found between keystrokes separating superordinate goals while less significant time increases appeared between keystrokes at subgoal boundaries. Changes in the patterns of interkeystroke times showed plan restructuring with experience.
Self-dual supergravity and twistor theory

By generalizing and extending some of the earlier results derived by Manin and Merkulov, a twistor description is given of four-dimensional -extended (gauged) self-dual supergravity with and without cosmological constant. Starting from the category of -dimensional complex superconformal supermanifolds, the categories of -dimensional complex quaternionic, quaternionic Kähler and hyper-Kähler right-chiral supermanifolds are introduced and discussed. We then present a detailed twistor description of these types of supermanifolds. In particular, we construct supertwistor spaces associated with complex quaternionic right-chiral supermanifolds, and explain what additional supertwistor data allow for giving those supermanifolds a hyper-Kähler structure. In this way, we obtain a supersymmetric generalization of Penrose's nonlinear graviton construction. We furthermore give an alternative formulation in terms of a supersymmetric extension of LeBrun's Einstein bundle. This allows us to include the cases with nonvanishing cosmological constant. We also discuss the bundle of local supertwistors and address certain implications thereof. Finally, we comment on a real version of the theory related to Euclidean signature.
Mutually shared bandwidth allocation mechanism in IEEE 802.16e

IEEE 802.16e network implements a centralized resource management system where the Base Station is responsible for allocating bandwidth to all the mobile stations. A fair bandwidth allocation algorithm ensures better quality of service and efficient utilization of precious wireless resource. In this paper a novel bandwidth allocation algorithm is proposed that aims to improve the throughput of the network by efficiently sharing the bandwidth among the users. A unique bandwidth allocation mechanism is proposed that tries to reduce the overhead in a frame to improve the overall throughput of the mobile station. Simulation results shows a 2-5% improvement in throughput of the MS. A reduction in the frame overhead is also observed in the simulation.
Performance Analysis and Design Criteria of BICM-ID With Signal Space Diversity for Keyhole Nakagami-$m$ Fading Channels

This paper generalizes the application bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID) using signal space diversity (SSD) over keyhole Nakagami-m fading channels. The tight union bound on the asymptotic error performance is first analytically derived. The near-optimal rotation matrix with respect to both the asymptotic performance and the convergence behavior is then determined. In particular, it is demonstrated that the suitable rotation matrix is the one that has 1) all entries equal in magnitude, 2) a high diversity order, and 3) a large minimum product of the ratios between squared distances to the power m and log-squared distances to the power m of the rotated constellation scaled by factors of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the parameter m . Various analytical and simulation results show that by employing SSD with a sufficiently large dimension, the error performance can closely approach that over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, even in the worst case of keyhole fading.
Acting on ( Bodily ) Experience

The complexities of bodily experience are outlined; its spatial phenomenology is specified as the explanatory target. The mereological structure of body representation is discussed; it is claimed that global spatial representations of the body are not necessary, as structural features of the actual body can be exploited in partial internal representation. The spatial structure of bodily experience is discussed; a structural affordance theory is introduced; it is claimed that bodily experience and subpersonal representation have action-oriented content; and that egocentric terms continue to make sense in application to bodily experience. The author acknowledges the financial support provided by the DISCOS project (Disorders and Coherence of the Embodied Self), a Marie Curie Research Training Networks initiative. He also wishes to thank Thomas Metzinger for his careful and crucial guidance, as well as Bert Karcher, Dorothée Legrand and Frédérique de Vignemont for their insightful comments on earlier versions.
A Comparative Study of TCP / IP Traffic Behavior in Broadband Access Networks ?

In recent years, broadband access has become the norm in the Internet world. As of now, not much has been said about the behavior of traffic on these access networks. Also, the common assumption has been that the traffic behavior on one broadband access network is not very different from another. In this paper, we present an analysis of TCP/IP traffic data that has been collected from two broadband access networks: Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and Broadband Fixed Wireless (BFW). We investigate the TCP session behavior in terms of duration and number of bytes transferred for both access schemes, including that of several dominating applications, namely, kazaa, gnutella (peer-to-peer (P2P) applications) and http. We also investigate the TCP connection interarrival time process in the two access schemes. We observe that although the TCP session behavior is similar in both access networks, the behavior of the connection interarrival time process in BFW is influenced by the underlying MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol.
PREview: Tackling the Real Concerns of Requirements Engineering

A common complaint from industrial development projects is that systems fail to address the real concerns of the major stakeholders. This results in much rework as missing requirements are identified, or incorrectly stressed requirements are changed at later stages in the life-cycle. A major cause of these problems is that the overriding needs become subsumed in the general welter of requirements information. For example, safety-critical systems enter service which are compromised by secondary requirements such as efficiency or throughput. These high-level, paramount needs, which are frequently vaguely expressed, represent the true concerns of the major stakeholders. As such they should be carefully elaborated and then used to drive the requirements process in such a way that conflicting requirements are identified early and negotiated away. This paper describes a method called PREview which integrates concerns into a viewpoint-oriented approach. PREview mandates the explicit identification and elaboration of concerns at the commencement of a requirements analysis and orients the rest of the process to the assurance of compliance with those concerns. It provides a light-weight and pragmatic approach to requirements engineering where the need to address concerns permeates every stage of the process.
Mobile Payment Service Development - Managerial Implications Of Consumer Value Perceptions

In recent years, a number of new payment solutions have been introduced with little success. The solutions have mostly been technology driven at the cost of convenience and value to the consumer. In this research in progress we investigate what characteristics of mobile payment solutions increase or decrease consumers' willingness to adopt these solutions. We also specify managerial implications for the guidance of consumers' payment solution adoption. As a frame of reference for understanding and explaining consumer value perceptions we use three befitting theories: Consumer perceived value (Gronroos, 1997), Technology acceptance model (Davis et. al., 1989), and network externalities theory (Shapiro & Varian, 1999). We conducted four focus group interviews for data collection. The results imply that mobile payment solutions are perceived to be valuable for small everyday purchases and other small purchases. There are, at the same time, still many concerns related to e.g. security and pricing. Ease of use, security, low transaction costs, and wide applicability of the solutions increase perceived customer value and should be managed by mobile payment solution providers. This research indicates clearly that only technically driven development may lack relevance for the potential users of mobile payment solutions.
StarClass: Interactive Visual Classification using Star Coordinates

Classification operations in a data-mining task are often performed using decision trees. The visual-based approach to decision tree construction has gained increasing popularity. We present StarClass, a new interactive visual classification method. This method maps multi-dimensional data to the visual display using star coordinates, allowing the user to interact with the display to create a decision tree. Preliminary evaluation indicates that this new technique is as effective as state-of-the-art algorithmic classification methods, and more effective than the previous visual-based methods. StarClass also offers additional advantages such as improving the user’s understanding of the data. visual data mining, classification, decision trees, information visualization, interactive visualization
Resistance to Degradation and Cellular Distribution are Important Features for the Antitumor Activity of Gomesin

Many reports have shown that antimicrobial peptides exhibit anticancer abilities. Gomesin (Gm) exhibits potent cytotoxic activity against cancer cells by a membrane pore formation induced after well-orchestrated intracellular mechanisms. In this report, the replacements of the Cys by Ser or Thr, and the use D-amino acids in the Gm structure were done to investigate the importance of the resistance to degradation of the molecule with its cytotoxicity. [Thr2,6,11,15]-Gm, and [Ser2,6,11,15]-Gm exhibits low cytotoxicity, and low resistance to degradation, and after 24 h are present in localized area near to the membrane. Conversely, the use of D-amino acids in the analogue [D-Thr2,6,11,15]-D-Gm confers resistance to degradation, increases its potency, and maintained this peptide spread in the cytosol similarly to what happens with Gm. Replacements of Cys by Thr and Gln by L- or D-Pro ([D-Thr2,6,11,15, Pro9]-D-Gm, and [Thr2,6,11,15, D-Pro9]-Gm), which induced a similar β-hairpin conformation, also increase their resistance to degradation, and cytotoxicity, but after 24 h they are not present spread in the cytosol, exhibiting lower cytotoxicity in comparison to Gm. Additionally, chloroquine, a lysosomal enzyme inhibitor potentiated the effect of the peptides. Furthermore, the binding and internalization of peptides was determined, but a direct correlation among these factors was not observed. However, cholesterol ablation, which increase fluidity of cellular membrane, also increase cytotoxicity and internalization of peptides. β-hairpin spatial conformation, and intracellular localization/target, and the capability of entry are important properties of gomesin cytotoxicity.
Cocirculation of 2 Genotypes of Toscana Virus, Southeastern France

Toscana virus (TOSV), an arthropodborne phlebovirus transmitted by sandflies, can cause febrile illness and meningitis. The vector of TOSV in France was unknown. We detected TOSV RNA in 2 (female Phlebotomus perniciosus) of 61 pools of sandflies captured in southeastern France. Two genotypes of TOSV were identified.
CSTN-087 Automatically Generating Efficient Simulation Codes on GPUs from Partial Differential Equations

We show how compiler technology can generate fast and efficient yet human-readable data-parallel simulation code for solving certain partial differential equation (PDE) based problems. We present a code parser and generator based on an ANTLR grammar and tree walking approach that transforms a mathematical formulation of an equation such as the Cahn-Hilliard family into simulation software in C++ or in NVIDIA’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) language for programming Graphical Processing Units (GPUS). We present software architectural ideas, generated specimen code and detailed performance data on modern GPUs. We discuss how code generation techniques can be used to speed up code development and computational run time for related complex system simulation problems.
Overdiagnosis due to prostate-specific antigen screening: lessons from U.S. prostate cancer incidence trends.

BACKGROUND Overdiagnosis of clinically insignificant prostate cancer is considered a major potential drawback of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening. Quantitative estimates of the magnitude of this problem are, however, lacking. We estimated rates of prostate cancer overdiagnosis due to PSA testing that are consistent with the observed incidence of prostate cancer in the United States from 1988 through 1998. Overdiagnosis was defined as the detection of prostate cancer through PSA testing that otherwise would not have been diagnosed within the patient's lifetime. METHODS We developed a computer simulation model of PSA testing and subsequent prostate cancer diagnosis and death from prostate cancer among a hypothetical cohort of two million men who were 60-84 years old in 1988. Given values for the expected lead time--that is, the time by which the test advanced diagnosis--and the expected incidence of prostate cancer in the absence of PSA testing, the model projected the increase in population incidence of prostate cancer associated with PSA testing. By comparing the model-projected incidence with the observed incidence derived from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry data, we determined the lead times and corresponding overdiagnosis rates that were consistent with the observed data. RESULTS SEER data on prostate cancer incidence from 1988 through 1998 were consistent with overdiagnosis rates of approximately 29% for whites and 44% for blacks among men with prostate cancers detected by PSA screening. CONCLUSIONS Among men with prostate cancer that would be detected only at autopsy, these rates correspond to overdiagnosis rates of, at most, 15% in whites and 37% in blacks. The observed trends in prostate cancer incidence are consistent with considerable overdiagnosis among PSA-detected cases. However, the results suggest that the majority of screen-detected cancers diagnosed between 1988 and 1998 would have presented clinically and that only a minority of cases found at autopsy would have been detected by PSA testing.
Portable telescope control system project

The portable telescope control system (PTCS) project is a collaboration between the Anglo-Australian Observatory and the Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawaii. The project aims to develop telescope control software in a form which is portable between a wide range of computer systems, and which can easily be adapted to different telescopes. PTCS uses the DRAMA software environment which provides a high degree of operating system independence. The PTCS design is based on tested algorithms used in existing successful telescope control systems. The initial version of PTCS is now being interfaced to an EPICS based drive servo system for use with the James Clerk Maxwell sub-millimeter telescope on Mauna Kea.
Adaptive robust precision motion control of linear motors with negligible electrical dynamics: theory and experiments

This paper studies the high performance robust motion control of linear motors that have a negligible electrical dynamics. A discontinuous projection based adaptive robust controller (ARC) is first constructed. The controller guarantees a prescribed transient performance and final tracking accuracy in general while achieving asymptotic tracking in the presence of parametric uncertainties only. A desired compensation ARC scheme is then presented, in which the regressor is calculated using desired trajectory information only. The resulting controller has several implementation advantages. Both schemes are implemented and compared on an epoxy core linear motor. Extensive comparative experimental results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and the achievable control performance of the two ARC designs.