Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Building a Source-to-Source UPC-toC Translator

Unified Parallel C (UPC) is a parallel language that uses a Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) model of parallelism within a global address space. The Berkeley UPC Compiler is an open source and high-performance implementation of the language. The choice of C as the code generation target greatly enhances the compiler’s portability, as evidenced by its support of a wide range of supercomputing platforms, including large-scale multiprocessors, vector machines, and network of workstations. In this paper I describe the translator component of the Berkeley UPC Compiler, which is responsible for performing UPC-to-C transformation and generating the necessary runtime calls for communication. The goal of the translator is to generate high quality C code while enabling easy porting of the compiler, and also provide a framework that allows for extensive high-level optimizations. We use a combination of micro-benchmarks and application kernels to show that our compiler can output C code that achieves good performance on both superscalar and vector environments, despite the source-to-source transformation process. We also investigate several communication optimizations, specifically targeting two optimizations can get significantly improve the performance of finegrained programs: message coalescing and split-phase communication generation.
Incidence and Characteristics of Vancomycin Nonsusceptible Strains of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus at Hershey Medical Center

ABSTRACT All 982 methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains collected from August 2006 to December 2007 were tested for vancomycin susceptibility by using 3-μg/ml vancomycin brain heart infusion screening plates, a vancomycin Etest, and a vancomycin/teicoplanin macro Etest. Three vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA) (0.3%) and two heterogeneous VISA (0.2%) isolates were identified. The screening method yielded 895 cases of ≤1 colony and 87 positive results (with growth of >1 colony after 48 h); further Etests showed 82/87 isolates with growth on screening plates to be false positive. Repeat testing showed a false-positivity rate of only 15 of the original 87 isolates by plate screening.
Review of dimensionality reduction techniques using clustering algorithm in reconstruction of gene regulatory networks

Reconstruction of gene regulatory networks or `reverse-engineering' is a process of identifying gene interaction networks from experimental microarray gene expression profile through computation techniques. However, there are some issues and challenges remain in gene regulatory network construction. One of them is the inference complexity due to the high dimensionality of gene expression data. The suggestions for addressing this problem is dimensionality reduction will be applied to the data to reduce the large search space. Many studies have been proposed clustering algorithm to handle the large dimensionality of the data, aiming to improve the accuracy of the inferred network while reducing time complexity. Thus, this paper presents a review of clustering algorithm as dimensionality reduction techniques in the reconstruction of Gene Regulatory Networks. In addition, several new trends were noted to improve the efficiency of clustering algorithms, dimensionality reduction techniques will be employed as clustering algorithm often does not work well for high dimensional data.
3.0 T Plaque Imaging

Objectives: The aim of this article is to evaluate 3.0 T magnetic resonance imaging for characterization of vessel morphology and plaque composition. Emphasis is placed on early and moderate stages of carotid atherosclerosis, where increases in signal-to-noise (SNR) and contrast-to-noise (CNR) ratios compared with 1.5 T are sought. Comparison of in vivo 3.0 T imaging to histopathology is performed for validation. Parallel acceleration methods applied with an 8-channel carotid array are investigated as well as higher field ex vivo imaging to explore even further gains. The overall endeavor is to improve prospective assessment of atherosclerosis stage and stability for reduction of atherothrombotic event risk. Methods: A total of 10 male and female subjects ranging in age from 22 to 72 years (5 healthy and 5 with cardiovascular disease) participated. Custom-built array coils were used with endogenous and exogenous multicontrast bright and black-blood protocols for 3.0 T carotid imaging. Comparisons were performed to 1.5 T, and ex vivo plaque was stained with hematoxylin and eosin for histology. Imaging (9.4 T) was also performed on intact specimens. Results: The factor of 2 gain in signal-to-noise SNR is realized compared with 1.5 T along with improved wall-lumen and plaque component CNR. Post-contrast black-blood imaging within 5-10 minutes of gadolinium injection is optimal for detection of the necrotic lipid component. In a preliminary 18-month follow-up study, this method provided measurement of a 50% reduction in lipid content with minimal change in plaque size in a subject receiving aggressive statin therapy. Parallel imaging applied with signal averaging further improves 3.0 T black-blood vessel wall imaging. Conclusions: The use of 3.0 T for carotid plaque imaging has demonstrated increases in SNR and CNR compared with 1.5 T. Quantitative prospective studies of moderate and early plaques are feasible at 3.0 T. Continued improvements in coil arrays, 3-dimensional pulse sequences, and the use of novel molecular imaging agents implemented at high field will further improve magnetic resonance plaque characterization.
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF AEROSOL PARTICLES ON LINK RANGE OF FREE SPACE LASER COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN IRAQ

Attenuation due to aerosols restricts the distance of FSO communication systems and limits the availability for line-of-sight terrestrial link. This work is focused on the effect of aerosols on the FSO link. The attenuations was studied in the Hilla city in the aerosols phenomena for three selected wavelengths (532, 1064, and 10600 nm) for horizontal transmitting range (1-10) Km. The results show that system availability as a function of the range, and indicate that FSO systems can be deployed with reliability in Hilla city of Iraq.
Repetition in canned jokes and spontaneous conversational joking1

Repetition of words and actions plays an important role in both canned jokes and spontaneous conversational joking; and theories of humor have stressed either the automatic aspect of repetition äs mechanical action or its creative aspect in clever Variation. This contribution investigates the dual character of repetition äs rote reproduction versus creative Variation in verbal humor from the perspective of both sorts of theories. It seeks to describe theforms andfunctions of repetition in canned jokes and spontaneous joking äs well äs to shed some light on the relation between the two.
Proliferation of normal and malignant human immature lymphoid cells.

In this study, the proliferative activity of human B and T cell precursors in central lymphoid organs, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells, and permanent cell lines was investigated with double- and triple-color-labeling methods for the analysis of cell cycle-associated features such as 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation and the expression of a nuclear proliferation-associated antigen, Ki67, together with the phenotypic profile of the cells. In infant and regenerating bone marrow (BM), 41.5% +/- 4.0% of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT+) cells were Ki67+, and 30.0% +/- 4.0% incorporated BrdU. A similar proportion of TdT+ dividing cells was observed in adult BM. The proliferative activity of the B cell progenitors reached the peak at the pre-B stage: 80.8% +/- 7.6% and 35.3% +/- 6.1% of c mu +, RFB7- cells were Ki67+ and BrdU+, respectively. In contrast, greater than 95% of surface immunoglobulin-positive BM lymphocytes were resting cells. In infant thymus the highest dividing capacity (95% Ki67+, 60% to 90% BrdU+) was observed in large cortical thymocytes (TdT+, CD1-, cCD3+), and TdT+, CD1+ cortical thymocytes also showed a high proliferative activity (74.3% +/- 2.3% Ki67+, 22.0% +/- 1.0% BrdU+), but TdT-, mCD3+ thymic lymphocytes were mainly resting cells (less than 5% Ki67+, less than 1% BrdU+). The proliferative activity of null and common ALL blasts was significantly lower than that of normal BM TdT+ cells (15.5% +/- 4.2% Ki67+, 6.2% +/- 2.1% BrdU+; P less than .001). Dividing ALL blasts were TdT+ and expressed surface antigens detected by CD10 and/or CD19 antibodies. In T cell-ALL, the percentages of Ki67+ and BrdU+ blasts were also lower than those found in the corresponding normal immature thymocytes (13.0% +/- 3.1% and 2.4% +/- 1.3%, respectively; P less than .001). Thus, ALLs derive from actively proliferating lymphoid precursors but have a lower dividing capacity than the corresponding normal cell types. In ALL cases with heterogeneous expression of markers such as cmu and CD1, dividing blasts were distributed among both negative and positive populations, thus indicating that blasts with signs of differentiation also remain within the dividing pool.
A Performance Analysis of the Minimax Multivariate Quality Control Chart

ii Acknowledgements . iii List of Tables. v List of Figures . vi Chapter 1 Introduction . 1 1.1 Control Charts. 1 1.2 The Minimax Control Chart . 4 1.3 Problem Description. 5 Chapter 2 Literature Review.6 2.1 Univariate Control Charts. 6 2.2 Multivariate Control Charts . 7 2.3 Pseudorandom Number Generation . 10 2.4 Pseudorandom Vector Generation . 14 Chapter 3 Problem Statement . 16 3.1 The Minimax Control Chart (Sepulveda 1996) . 16 3.2 The Chi-Square Control Chart. 20 3.3 Chart Comparison. 21 3.4 Multivariate Uniform Random Vector Generation. 22 3.5 Experimental Methodology. 22 Chapter 4 – Results and Conclusions.27 4.1 Two Quality Variables (p=2). 27 4.2 Five Quality Variables (p=5). 32 4.3 Eight Quality Variables (p=8). 37 4.4 Summary. 42 Chapter 5 – Future Research . 44 References . 45 Appendix . 48 Appendix A Calculation of and for the Minimax Chart . 49 Appendix B C++ Code for the Tausworthe Random Number Generator.51 Appendix C Mathematica Notebook to Perform the Chart Comparison.52 Appendix D – Mathematica Package to Perform the Chart Comparison.55 Appendix E – Experimental Data.59 Vita. 78
A mixed integer linear programming approach for multi-degree cyclic multi-hoist scheduling problems without overlapping

This paper considers multi-degree cyclic multi-hoist scheduling problems without overlapping. Identical parts are produced in tanks for stages with processing time window constraints. The objective of this research is to obtain a schedule that can maximize the throughput of the line at steady state, equivalently minimize the cycle time. There are three kinds of constraints in cyclic hoist scheduling problems, i.e. hoist available constraints, tank capacity constraints and time window constraints. Moreover, schedules must void hoist conflicts in multi-hoist scenarios, since multiple hoists use the same overhead track and they cannot cross over each other. In this paper, the hoist assignment strategy without overlapping is used to void hoist conflicts. In order to obtain the optimal schedule, a mixed integer linear programming model is formulated. Then, a numerical example is used to illustrate the model proposed.
Stress and African American Women’s Smoking/Drinking to Cope

Associations of urban poverty-related stress with smoking and drinking to cope and the moderating role of kin social support were assessed in African American women. Findings revealed that among a sample of 101 poor African American women residing in economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, depressive symptoms and relationship stress were significantly associated with smoking. Similarly, perceptions of neighborhood crime were marginally associated with alcohol use. Kinship support was hypothesized to buffer women from the deleterious impacts of stress. The results revealed that kin social support moderated the association of poverty-related stress with smoking and drinking. For women with higher levels of kin support, the positive association of neighborhood crime and drinking was less apparent compared with women with low support. Also, the links between relationship stress, depressive symptoms, and smoking were less apparent for women with higher kin support compared with those with lower support. Findings are discussed in terms of the need for additional research on the social networks available to economically disadvantaged African American families and the manner in which networks operate.
Organizational Communication

Note: To graduate with a degree in Communication Studies, the student must complete 36 COMX credits with 18 of those credits in courses numbered 300 or above. Students must also complete an approved statistics course (3 credits). In the Organizational Communication option, students must complete an additional 9 credits in Allied courses to reach 48 degree credits. A maximum of 6 credits in COMX 312 and a maximum of 6 credits in COMX 398may count toward a major in communication studies.
SOCS-1 Protects against Chlamydia pneumoniae-Induced Lethal Inflammation but Hampers Effective Bacterial Clearance1

Suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1) plays a major role in the inhibition of STAT1-mediated responses. STAT1-dependent responses are critical for resistance against infection with Chlamydia pneumoniae. We studied the regulation of expression of SOCS1 and SOCS3, and the role of SOCS1 during infection with C. pneumoniae in mice. Bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMM) and dendritic cells in vitro or lungs in vivo all showed enhanced STAT1-dependent SOCS1 mRNA accumulation after infection with C. pneumoniae. Infection-increased SOCS1 mRNA levels were dependent on IFN-αβ but not on IFN-γ. T or B cells were not required for SOCS1 mRNA accumulation in vivo. Infection-induced STAT1-phosphorylation occurred more rapidly in SOCS1−/− BMM. In agreement, expression of IFN-γ responsive genes, but not IL-1β, IL-6, or TNF-α were relatively increased in C. pneumoniae-infected SOCS1−/− BMM. Surprisingly, C. pneumoniae infection-induced IFN-α, IFN-β, and IFN-γ expression in BMM were attenuated by SOCS1. C. pneumoniae infection of RAG1−/−/SOCS1−/− mice induced a rapid lethal inflammation, accompanied by diminished pulmonary bacterial load and increased levels of iNOS and IDO but not IL-1β, IL-6, or TNF-α mRNA. In summary, C. pneumoniae infection induces a STAT1, IFN-αβ-dependent and IFN-γ independent SOCS1 mRNA accumulation. Presence of SOCS1 controls the infection-induced lethal inflammatory disease but impairs the bacterial control.
Experimental verification of antagonistic stiffness planning for a 2-DOF planar parallel manipulator

In this paper, two torque assignment methods of the antagonistic stiffness for a 2-DOF planar parallel manipulator are presented and verified by experiments. The first method is equalizing the magnitude of the stiffness in all directions at a desired position. The second method is maximizing the active stiffness in one direction at a given path. A 2-DOF parallel mechanism with four actuators is used for verification tests, where the internal torque of the mechanism exists on the two dimensional null space. In the experiment, passive and active stiffness are tested when endowing the external force at the moving platform and compared with the estimated results.
Management of distributed resource allocations in multi-cluster environments

We present a fully distributed solution for managing resource allocation for services running across multiple clusters in a large-scale cloud computing environment. Our solution allows individual services running across clusters to compete dynamically for allocations based on their rate of consumption while maintaining the global cloud level allocation limits. The solution monitors resource consumption by services that are spread over a number of clusters. Global polls are triggered only when the allocated balance in a cluster decreases below a threshold and allocations are reassigned in a manner that avoids further immediate global polls. Our solution achieves scalability by minimizing global message exchanges, increases performance by distributing requests, and improves availability by avoiding a single point of failure. We perform a range of simulations to verify the accuracy of our approach, to validate our theoretical results, and to evaluate against competing approaches.
Cross Cultural Perspectives of Expatriate Managers Working in Egypt

This study focuses on western managers of organizations doing business in Egypt, and examines their perspectives on the interface between them and Egyptian culture, within an organizational framework. The research was carried out through a mailed questionnaire survey sent to foreign managers of organizations doing business in Egypt. Informal interviews and the relevant literature provided the topics for the survey. Four macro-themes emerged from the analysis of the various survey topics. In sequential order of importance, these are cultural respect (the extent to which culture should be taken into consideration as far as organization is concerned), cultural experience (the experience of foreign managers of the different behavioural traits of Egyptians within the workplace), cultural adaptability (foreign managers' reactions to certain cultural traits that exhibit themselves in the workplace), and cultural understanding (understanding of the reasons that underlie the behavioural traits encountered). These findings are a preliminary step for further research in an area that has a high potential for business, yet low research input.
From the other shore: American political science and the ‘Italian case’

This article examines a number of the major works on Italy conducted by political scientists from the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Focusing on the research of Banfield, Almond and Verba, Tarrow and Putnam, it discusses the interpretations of Italy offered by these scholars and examines the contribution they have made to the political and intellectual debate surrounding the so-called ‘Italian case’. It concludes that the image presented of Italy by American researchers is generally critical and often simplified and stereotypical. Moreover, rather than highlighting the clichés frequently present in such accounts, Italian intellectuals have tended instead to use them in order to construct a wholly negative perspective of Italy and, in many instances, have distorted the original intentions of those American political scientists whose work is cited as evidence.
Improved Word Alignment Using a Symmetric Lexicon Model

Word-aligned bilingual corpora are an important knowledge source for many tasks in natural language processing. We improve the well-known IBM alignment models, as well as the Hidden-Markov alignment model using a symmetric lexicon model. This symmetrization takes not only the standard translation direction from source to target into account, but also the inverse translation direction from target to source. We present a theoretically sound derivation of these techniques. In addition to the symmetrization, we introduce a smoothed lexicon model. The standard lexicon model is based on full-form words only. We propose a lexicon smoothing method that takes the word base forms explicitly into account. Therefore, it is especially useful for highly inflected languages such as German. We evaluate these methods on the German-English Verbmobil task and the French-English Canadian Hansards task. We show statistically significant improvements of the alignment quality compared to the best system reported so far. For the Canadian Hansards task, we achieve an improvement of more than 30% relative.
White Light Constrained Multi-Primary Modulation for Visible Light Communication

The application of visible light communication (VLC) systems is to transmit data while maintaining efficient and good quality illumination service. In order to meet standard lighting requirements when multi-colored modulation techniques are used, such as color shift keying (CSK), the color fluctuation becomes a relevant issue. This paper presents a multi- primary (multi-color) modulation technique which provides reliable data transmission while keeping a strong constraint on the light color illuminated by every symbol of the modulation alphabet. The number of possible primary color combinations that ensure white light are calculated for a given set of multi-color light sources. The system performance in terms of bit error rate for different constellation is evaluated and compared against other multi-color VLC schemes in the literature, considering a range of channel impairments due to the optical front-end components.
Hepatocellular carcinoma: CT for tumor response after transarterial chemoembolization in patients exceeding Milan criteria--selection parameter for liver transplantation.

PURPOSE To retrospectively evaluate the clinical outcome of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who exceeded the Milan criteria, who underwent transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) before orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT), to determine the value of computed tomography (CT)-based tumor response to TACE as a preoperative selection criterion for OLT. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study included 33 patients with HCC who exceeded the Milan criteria and underwent OLT after TACE. Informed written consent was obtained before TACE and OLT. Institutional review board approval was not required. Tumor response to TACE was evaluated at 1 month with CT according to amended Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours (RECIST) guidelines. In the explanted liver, degree of tumor necrosis (> or = 90%, 50%-89%, or < 50%), residual tumor stage and grade, and presence of microvascular invasion were assessed. Follow-up after OLT ranged from 1 to 143 months. RESULTS After TACE, CT showed complete tumor response (CR) in 18 (55%) patients. On the explanted liver, tumor necrosis was rated 90% or greater in 20 (61%) patients, with a good correlation with CT. Microvascular invasion was observed in nine (27%) of 33 patients; none of them were reported to have a CR at CT. The 5-year cumulative survival rate after OLT was 72.5%; it was significantly (P = .003) higher in patients with a CR (94.4%) compared with patients with a partial response (PR) (45.4%) and stable disease (50%). The 5-year cumulative recurrence-free rate after OLT was 74.4%; it was not affected by the tumor nodule size and number, whereas it was significantly (P = .008) higher in patients with a CR (94.4%) compared with patients with a PR (46.7%) and stable disease (50%). CONCLUSION In patients with HCC who exceeded the Milan criteria, a CR after TACE, on the basis of amended RECIST guidelines, is associated with excellent posttransplantation outcomes. Therefore, 1-month response to TACE assessed at CT may represent a valid selection criterion for OLT.
New criteria for iterative decoding

Iterative decoding was not originally introduced as the solution to an optimization problem rendering the analysis of its convergence very difficult. In this paper, we investigate the link between iterative decoding and classical optimization techniques. We first show that iterative decoding can be rephrased as two embedded minimization processes involving the Fermi-Dirac distance. Based on this new formulation, an hybrid proximal point algorithm is first derived with the additional advantage of decreasing a desired criterion. In a second part, an hybrid minimum entropy algorithm is proposed with improved performance compared to the classical iterative decoding. Even if this paper focus on iterative decoding for BICM, the results can be applied to the large class of turbo-like decoders.