Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving Signatures by Locality Exploitation for Transactional Memory

Writing multithreaded programs is a fairly complex task that poses a major obstacle to exploit multicore processors. Transactional Memory (TM) emerges as an alternative to the conventional multithreaded programming to ease the writing of concurrent programs. Hardware Transactional Memory (HTM) implements most of the required mechanisms of TM at the core level, e.g. conflict detection. Signatures are designed to support the detection of conflicts amongst concurrent transactions, and are usually implemented as per-thread Bloom filters in HTM. Basically, signatures use fixed hardware to summarize an unbounded amount of read and write memory addresses at the cost of false conflicts (detection of non-existing conflicts). In this paper, a novel signature design that exploit locality is proposed to reduce the number of false conflicts. We show how that reduction translates into a performance improvement in the execution of concurrent transactions. Our signatures are based on address mappings of the hash functions that reduce the number of bits inserted in the filter for those addresses nearby located. This is specially favorable for large transactions, that usually exhibit some amount of spatial locality. Furthermore, the implementation do not require extra hardware. Our proposal was experimentally evaluated using the Wisconsin GEMS simulator and all codes from the STAMP benchmark suite. Results show a significant performance improvement in many cases, specially for those codes with long-running, large-data transactions.
Fast Dissolving Sublingual Films of Ondansetron Hydrochloride: Effect of Additives on in vitro Drug Release and Mucosal Permeation

Ondansetron hydrochloride, a 5 HT3 antagonist is a powerful antiemetic drug which has oral bioavailability of 60% due to hepatic first pass metabolism and has a short half-life of 5 h. To overcome the above draw back, the present study was carried out to formulate and evaluate fast dissolving films of ondansetron hydrochloride for sublingual administration. The films were prepared from polymers such as polyvinylalcohol, polyvinyl pyrrolidone, Carbopol 934P in different ratios by solvent casting method. Propylene glycol or PEG 400 as plasticizers and mannitol or sodium saccharin as sweeteners were also included. The IR spectral studies showed no interaction between drug and polymer or with other additives. Satisfactory results were obtained when subjected to physico-chemical tests such as uniformity of weight, thickness, surface pH, folding endurance, uniformity of drug content, swelling index, bioadhesive strength, and tensile strength. Films were also subjected to in vitro drug release studies by using USP dissolution apparatus. Ex vivo drug permeation studies were carried out using porcine membrane model. In vitro release studies indicated 81–96% release within 7 min and 66–80% within 7 min during ex vivo studies. Drug permeation of 66–77% was observed through porcine mucosa within 40 min. Higher percentage of drug release was observed from films containing the sweeteners. The stability studies conducted for a period of 8 weeks showed no appreciable change in drug content, surface pH, and in vitro drug release.
Knowledge Modeling for End-To-End QOS Management

In this paper, we propose a formal knowledge modeling methodology based on ontology to assist in the logic reasoning of distributed QoS information which is commonly not available in traditional QoS modeling and support. As part of our project toward a semantic-based QoS control and management framework, the knowledge modeling scheme presented in this paper enables an explicit representation of various QoS concepts and their relations, thus provides a foundation for understanding and decision-making of QoS during setup and runtime. The technical feasibility of our knowledge-based QoS scheme has been demonstrated in our prototype, which yields the aforementioned benefits with acceptable processing overhead on PCs and laptops.
Towards semi-automated curation: using text mining to recreate the HIV-1, human protein interaction database

Manual curation has long been used for extracting key information found within the primary literature for input into biological databases. The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), human protein interaction database (HHPID), for example, contains 2589 manually extracted interactions, linked to 14 312 mentions in 3090 articles. The advancement of text-mining (TM) techniques has offered a possibility to rapidly retrieve such data from large volumes of text to a high degree of accuracy. Here, we present a recreation of the HHPID using the current state of the art in TM. To retrieve interactions, we performed gene/protein named entity recognition (NER) and applied two molecular event extraction tools on all abstracts and titles cited in the HHPID. Our best NER scores for precision, recall and F-score were 87.5%, 90.0% and 88.6%, respectively, while event extraction achieved 76.4%, 84.2% and 80.1%, respectively. We demonstrate that over 50% of the HHPID interactions can be recreated from abstracts and titles. Furthermore, from 49 available open-access full-text articles, we extracted a total of 237 unique HIV-1–human interactions, as opposed to 187 interactions recorded in the HHPID from the same articles. On average, we extracted 23 times more mentions of interactions and events from a full-text article than from an abstract and title, with a 6-fold increase in the number of unique interactions. We further demonstrated that more frequently occurring interactions extracted by TM are more likely to be true positives. Overall, the results demonstrate that TM was able to recover a large proportion of interactions, many of which were found within the HHPID, making TM a useful assistant in the manual curation process. Finally, we also retrieved other types of interactions in the context of HIV-1 that are not currently present in the HHPID, thus, expanding the scope of this data set. All data is available at http://gnode1.mib. man.ac. uk/HIV1-text-mining.
Parameterization‐Aware MIP‐Mapping

We present a method of generating mipmaps that takes into account the distortions due to the parameterization of a surface. Existing algorithms for generating mipmaps assume that the texture is isometrically mapped to the surface and ignore the actual surface parameterization. Our method correctly downsamples warped textures by assigning texels weights proportional to their area on a surface. We also provide a least‐squares approach to filtering over these warped domains that takes into account the postfilter used by the GPU. Our method improves texture filtering for most models but only modifies mipmap generation, requires no modification of art assets or rasterization algorithms, and does not affect run‐time performance.
Zoonotic illness--determining risks and measuring effects: association between current animal exposure and a history of illness in a well characterised rural population in the UK.

STUDY OBJECTIVES--To recruit a representative sample of farmworkers, accurately quantify the range and extent of their animal exposures, and measure the associated risks of illness. DESIGN--Inception cohort. SETTING--The study was undertaken among farmworkers living in five local authority areas in the catchment of Hereford and Preston Public Health Laboratories, England. PARTICIPANTS--A quota sample of 404 people on 255 agricultural holdings took part. The holdings were selected at random from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food register. Altogether 58% of eligible subjects approached agreed to participate. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS--The sample had the same sex distribution as the 1991 census for those giving their occupation as agriculture. The mean age was significantly (p < 0.01) higher (44.6 years v 42.2 years) than that of those giving their occupation as agriculture, forestry or fishing in the census, although the modal range (45-59 years) was the same. At enrollment interviews, subjects individually reported contact with up to nine animal species (mode 4) out of 26 reported in all. Based on the numbers contacted and the frequency and intimacy of contact, scores on a ranked ordinal scale from 0-5 were constructed for each species and frequencies for each score were plotted. Subjects also reported past operations and serious illness. A history of pneumonia was significantly (p < 0.05) associated with a pigeon loft on the farm (relative risk (RR) 7.3) and attending farrowing pigs (RR 6.6), and one of leptospirosis with a rat problem on the farm (RR 28.1). Cattle contact was associated with a significantly lower likelihood (protective) of glandular fever (RR 0.19) and rheumatic or scarlet fever (RR 0.12). These effects were significantly related to rankings of the extent of exposure. CONCLUSIONS--It is possible to recruit a representative sample of farmworkers and measure their animal exposures in great detail. Among these exposures, associations with plausible risk factors for pneumonia and leptospirosis and apparently protective factors for glandular fever, scarlet fever, and rheumatic fever have been demonstrated, which further show a relationship between the extent of exposure and response. These findings can be tested further by examining the relationship of exposures to serological evidence of illness or by further prospective follow up of this and similarly well characterised cohorts, or both.
Managerial incentive structures, conservatism and the pricing of syndicated loans

Drawing on previous theoretical research, this paper empirically explores the effect of manager-shareholder incentive alignment, as measured by the extent of equity compensation, on the pricing of syndicated loan contracts. First, I document that high levels of alignment are associated with larger risk premiums in loan spreads and with more restrictive covenants. Second, I document the effect of ex ante accounting conservatism on loan terms, conditional on managerial ex post reporting incentives as proxied by the level of manager-shareholder incentive alignment. I find that ex ante accounting conservatism decreases loan spreads and increases the number of financial covenants in the loan contract when managers receive average or below-average equity compensation. However, ex ante conservatism leads to banks demanding larger loan spreads as well as fewer and tighter financial covenants when managers receive above-average equity compensation. These latter results provide evidence consistent with banks viewing ex ante conservatism as an instrument for reducing the monitoring value of financial covenants when managers have incentives to over-report ex post due to large equity compensation.
Exploring the role, needs and challenges of relatives of mothers with HIV or HIV and psychosis: A qualitative study

This study explored types and nature of supports by relatives of mothers living with HIV and psychosis in comparison to mothers with HIV only. Interview data on their experiences of their roles, needs and challenges were collected from 33 relatives on mothers with HIV and psychosis (n=12, females=10, blacks =12, age ranges 21 to 62) and those with HIV only (n=21, females=16, blacks =21, age ranges 18 to 63). The data were thematically analysed utilizing Atlas.ti. The results showed that relatives in both groups provided a variety of supporting roles. Important challenges were experiencing the negative consequences of especially HIV in combination with psychosis in their lives and dealing with the caregiving responsibilities without having enough information. Important strengths included utilizing support networks and remaining hopeful. Support needs for carers of mothers living with HIV related psychosis or HIV only, can be enhanced with increasing social and material resources at the community level. Supporting needs can be addressed by empowering communities through psycho-education.
Optimization and analysis of the extended Playfair cipher

The well known multiple letter encryption cipher is the Playfair cipher. Here the diagrams in the plaintext are treated as single units and converted into corresponding cipher text diagrams. However because of the drawbacks inherent in the 5*5 Playfair cipher which adversely affects the security we proposed an 8*8 Playfair cipher. For details one can refer to [1]. This paper analyses the new proposed system. For this we have carried out cryptanalysis and through the avalanche effect we find out that the proposed cipher is a strong one.
Computer simulation of heat transfer in zone plate optics exposed to x-ray FEL radiation

Zone plates are circular diffraction gratings that can provide diffraction-limited nano-focusing of x-ray radiation. When designing zone plates for X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) sources special attention has to be made concerning the high intensity of the sources. Absorption of x-rays in the zone material can lead to significant temperature increases in a single pulse and potentially destroy the zone plate. The zone plate might also be damaged as a result of temperature build up and/or temperature fluctuations on longer time scales. In this work we simulate the heat transfer in a zone plate on a substrate as it is exposed to XFEL radiation. This is done in a Finite Element Method model where each new x-ray pulse is treated as an instantaneous heat source and the temperature evolution between pulses is calculated by solving the heat equation. We use this model to simulate different zone plate and substrate designs and source parameters. Results for both the 8 keV source at LCLS and the 12.4 keV source at the European XFEL are presented. We simulate zone plates made of high Z metals such as gold, tungsten and iridium as well as zone plates made of low Z materials such as diamond. In the case of metal zone plates we investigate the influence of substrate material by comparing silicon and diamond substrates. We also study the effect of different cooling temperatures and cooling schemes. The results give valuable indications on the temperature behavior to expect and can serve as a basis for future experimental investigations of zone plates exposed to XFEL radiation.
Leptogenesis MNS link in unified models with natural neutrino mass hierarchy

We discuss the relation between leptogenesis and the Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (MNS) phases in the class of seesaw models called light sequential dominance in which the right-handed neutrinos dominate sequentially, with the dominant right-handed neutrino being the lightest one. The heaviest right-handed neutrino then decouples, leaving effectively two right-handed neutrinos. Light sequential dominance is motivated by SO(10) models which predict three right-handed neutrinos. With an approximate Yukawa texture zero in the 11 position there are only two seesaw phases which are simply related to the MNS phase measurable at a neutrino factory and the leptogenesis phase. The leptogenesis phase is predicted to be equal to the neutrinoless double beta decay phase.
A hybrid framework for modeling comprehensible human gesture

We attempt to find suitable modeling for complex gesture patterns so that we can utilize it for recognition and reproduction. As a result, we propose a hybrid framework where the observable characteristics of gestures are modeled explicitly, while pattern details are processed by blind learning methods. Our hybrid approach thus consists of multiple layers with inter-communicating mechanisms between them. They are attribute-level trackers (AT), a gesture-level tracker (GT), and a situation-tracker (ST). AT deals with low-level pattern variations of human action and also has main responsibility for the segmentation of continuous action stream. GT deals with the temporally coordinated characteristics of concurrent attributes and ST keeps track of application-specific context knowledge. The overall model for comprehensible gestures could also serve as a global framework for generating gesture animation
Accuracy of tree height estimation based on LIDAR data analysis

Some modern remote sensing technologies, including LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging), have significantly developed recently. Laser scanners mounted on the airborne platform make it possible to collect very precise information over large areas, including tree and stand heights. A literature review shows that the model-based method of tree height determination underestimates this parameter in comparison to field measurements. The objective of the study was to analyze accuracy of the automatic height estimation of Scots pine stands, based on the airborne laser scanning data and the example of the Milicz Forest District. Applied algorithm of the stand segmentation into individual trees gave systematic and significant underestimation of the number of trees. The minimum tree height was estimated with a large negative error reaching up to several meters. The maximum mean and top heights were determined more precisely, with a small negative error of a few percent. The sum of tree heights was determined with an error exceeding 40%, which is caused mostly by the error in estimation of the number of trees.
Word Alignment Step by Step

In this paper the current stage of the Uppsala Word Aligner (UWA) is described. The system is developed within the project on parallel texts, PLUG, which has its focus on the analysis of bi-lingual text collections with Swedish either as the source or the target language. UWA comprises a set of knowledge-lite approaches' for word alignment and lexicon extraction. A distinctive feature is its modularity. In the article, the main principles of the alignment software are introduced, different configurations and approaches are described, and examples of alignment results are presented.
Item Set Extraction of Mining Association Rule

Most of the research activities in association rule mining focuses on defining efficient algorithms for item set extraction. To reduce the computational complexity of item set extraction, support constraint is enforced on the extracted item sets.The IMine index structure can be efficiently exploited by different item set extraction algorithms. This paper presents the IMine index, a general and compact structure which provides tight integration of item set extraction in a relational DBMS. Since no constraint is enforced during the index creation phase, IMine provides a complete representation of the original database. To reduce the I/O cost, data accessed together during the same extraction phase are clustered on the same disk block. The IMine index has been integrated into the PostgreSQL DBMS and exploits its physical level access methods. Experiments, run for both sparse and dense data distributions, show the efficiency of the proposed index and its linear scalability also for large data sets. Item set mining supported by the IMine index shows performance always comparable with, and often (especially for lowsupports) better than, state-of-theart algorithms accessing data on flat file.
Optimizing 802.11 Wireless Mesh Network Performance Using Physical Carrier Sensing

Multi-hop ad-hoc networks suffer from the presence of hidden and exposed nodes that diminish aggregate network throughput. While there are various approaches to mitigating these problems, in this work we focus exclusively on the role of physical carrier sensing (PCS). Specifically, tuning the PCS threshold leads to a trade-off between the ‘exposed’ and ‘hidden’ areas. The contributions of this work are (at-least) two-fold: i. we develop an analytical formulation (assuming constant rate nodes) to determine the optimal PCS threshold. It is shown that choosing the carrier sensing range equal to the interference rangeis the appropriate optimality principle for PCS based network optimization. An important component of this analysis is an improved link layer model in contrast to much of the existing literature, that leads to significantly new and different insights into enhancing 802.11 network performance. Further, ii. in attempting to support the analysis via simulations with OPNET, several problems with various aspects of OPNET’s implementations of the 802.11 link and MAC layers were exposed. Our description of these issues as well as fixes are likely to be of interest to the broader research community interested in using OPNET for their own investigations in 802.11 network performance 1 .
Genetic Analysis of Viruses Associated with Emergence of Rift Valley Fever in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, 2000-01

The first confirmed Rift Valley fever outbreak outside Africa was reported in September 2000, in the Arabian Peninsula. As of February 2001, a total of 884 hospitalized patients were identified in Saudi Arabia, with 124 deaths. In Yemen, 1,087 cases occurred, with 121 deaths. Laboratory diagnosis of Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) infections included virus genetic detection and characterization of clinical specimens by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, in addition to serologic tests and virus isolation. Genetic analysis of selected regions of virus S, M, and L RNA genome segments indicated little genetic variation among the viruses associated with disease. The Saudi Arabia and Yemen viruses were almost identical to those associated with earlier RVF epidemics in East Africa. Analysis of S, M, and L RNA genome segment sequence differences showed similar phylogenetic relationships among these viruses, indicating that genetic reassortment did not play an important role in the emergence of this virus in the Arabian Peninsula. These results are consistent with the recent introduction of RVFV into the Arabian Peninsula from East Africa.
Results of the BioASQ Tasks of the Question Answering Lab at CLEF 2015

The goal of this task is to push the research frontier towards hybrid information systems. We aim to promote systems and approaches that are able to deal with the whole diversity of the Web, especially for, but not restricted to, the context of bio-medicine. This goal is pursued by the organization of challenges. The second challenge consisted of two tasks: semantic indexing and question answering. 61 systems partici- pated by 18 dierent participating teams for the semantic indexing task, of which between 25 and 45 participated in each batch. The semantic indexing task was tackled by 22 systems, which were developed by 8 dierent organizations. Between 15 and 19 of these systems addressed each batch. The question answering task was tackled by 18 dierent sys- The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we aim to give an overview of the data issued during the BioASQ track of the Question Answering Lab at CLEF 2014. In addition, we aim to present the systems that participated in the challenge and for which we received system descriptions. In particular, we aim to evaluate their performance w.r. t. to dedicated baseline systems. To achieve these goals, we begin by giving a brief overview of the tasks included in the track, including the timing of the dierent tasks and the challenge data. Thereafter, we give an overview of the systems which participated in the challenge and provided us with an overview of the technologies they relied upon. Detailed descriptions of some of the systems are given in lab proceedings. The evaluation of the systems, which was carried out by using state-of-the-art measures or manual assessment, is the last focal point of this paper. The conclusion sums up the results of the track.