Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chapter 1 Green Clouds through Servers , Virtual Machines and Network Infrastructure Management

The aim of green cloud computing is to achieve a balance between resource consumption and quality of service. This work introduces the distributed system management model, analyses the system’s behavior, describes the operation principles, and presents case study scenarios and some results. We extended CloudSim to simulate the organization model approach and implemented the migration and reallocation policies using this improved version to validate our management solution. In this context, we proposed strategies to optimize the use of the cloud computing resources, introducing two hybrid strategies, describing the base strategies, validating and analyzing them, and presenting the results. The basic principles pointed out in recent works for power management in legacy network equipment are presented, and a model for its use to optimize green cloud approach is proposed.
How Socially Relevant Visual Characteristics of Avatars Influence Impression Formation

Like in the real world, the first impression a person leaves in a computer-mediated environment depends on his or her online appearance. The present study manipulates an avatar’s pupil size, eyeblink frequency, and the viewing angle to investigate whether nonverbal visual characteristics are responsible for the impression made. We assessed how participants (N = 56) evaluate these avatars in terms of different attributes. The findings show that avatars with large pupils and slow eye blink frequency are perceived as more sociable and more attractive. Compared to avatars seen in full frontal view or from above, avatars seen from below were rated as most sociable, self-confident, and attractive. Moreover, avatars’ pupil size and eyeblink frequency escape the viewer’s conscious perception but still influence how people evaluate them. The findings have wide-ranging applied implications for avatar design.
A Novel Intracellular Isoform of Matrix Metalloproteinase-2 Induced by Oxidative Stress Activates Innate Immunity

Background Experimental and clinical evidence has pinpointed a critical role for matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) in ischemic ventricular remodeling and systolic heart failure. Prior studies have demonstrated that transgenic expression of the full-length, 68 kDa, secreted form of MMP-2 induces severe systolic failure. These mice also had unexpected and severe mitochondrial structural abnormalities and dysfunction. We hypothesized that an additional intracellular isoform of MMP-2, which affects mitochondrial function is induced under conditions of systolic failure-associated oxidative stress. Methodology and Principal Findings Western blots of cardiac mitochondria from the full length MMP-2 transgenics, ageing mice and a model of accelerated atherogenesis revealed a smaller 65 kDa MMP-2 isoform. Cultured cardiomyoblasts subjected to transient oxidative stress generated the 65 kDa MMP-2 isoform. The 65 kDa MMP-2 isoform was also induced by hypoxic culture of cardiomyoblasts. Genomic database analysis of the MMP-2 gene mapped transcriptional start sites and RNA transcripts induced by hypoxia or epigenetic modifiers within the first intron of the MMP-2 gene. Translation of these transcripts yields a 65 kDa N-terminal truncated isoform beginning at M77, thereby deleting the signal sequence and inhibitory prodomain. Cellular trafficking studies demonstrated that the 65 kDa MMP-2 isoform is not secreted and is present in cytosolic and mitochondrial fractions, while the full length 68 kDa isoform was found only in the extracellular space. Expression of the 65 kDa MMP-2 isoform induced mitochondrial-nuclear stress signaling with activation of the pro-inflammatory NF-κB, NFAT and IRF transcriptional pathways. By microarray, the 65 kDa MMP-2 induces an innate immunity transcriptome, including viral stress response genes, innate immunity transcription factor IRF7, chemokines and pro-apoptosis genes. Conclusion A novel N-terminal truncated intracellular isoform of MMP-2 is induced by oxidative stress. This isoform initiates a primary innate immune response that may contribute to progressive cardiac dysfunction in the setting of ischemia and systolic failure.
Techniques improving throughput of wireless sensor network: A survey

In wireless sensor networks, maintaining the higher throughput is the main concern. Wireless senor networks are basically formed with a few powerful base stations and a large number of resource-constrained sensor nodes. The wireless sensor network composed of n number of sensors or nodes, where each and every node is connected to one or several nodes or sensors. For providing low data rate for short coverage and long battery life, zigbee is used in wireless sensors network and ultimately zigbee nodes are used in wireless sensor network which are called as zigbee sensor nodes. Wireless sensor nodes of zigbee system basically build on two aspects of protocol stack that are IEEE 802.15. 4 standard and zigbee protocol. The problem that sensors usually face in wireless sensor network is that when data packets are transferred from one node to another node, the throughput of the wireless sensor network decreases because of packet collisions and high network traffic. In order to overcome this problem, various methods have been discussed to improve the throughput.
New Pathways for Alimentary Mucositis

Alimentary mucositis is a major dose-limiting toxicity associated with anticancer treatment. It is responsible for reducing patient quality of life and represents a significant economic burden in oncology. The pathobiology of alimentary mucositis is extremely complex, and an increased understanding of mechanisms and pathway interactions is required to rationally design improved therapies. This review describes the latest advances in defining mechanisms of alimentary mucositis pathobiology in the context of pathway activation. It focuses particularly on the recent genome-wide analyses of regimen-related mucosal injury and the identification of specific regulatory pathways implicated in mucositis development. This review also discusses the currently known alimentary mucositis risk factors and the development of novel treatments. Suggestions for future research directions have been raised.
Effective cell and gene therapy in a murine model of Gaucher disease

Gaucher disease (GD) is a lysosomal storage disorder due to an inherited deficiency in the enzyme glucosylceramidase (GCase) that causes hepatosplenomegaly, cytopenias, and bone disease as key clinical symptoms. Previous mouse models with GCase deficiency have been lethal in the perinatal period or viable without displaying the clinical features of GD. We have generated viable mice with characteristic clinical symptoms of type 1 GD by conditionally deleting GCase exons 9–11 upon postnatal induction. Both transplantation of WT bone marrow (BM) and gene therapy through retroviral transduction of BM from GD mice prevented development of disease and corrected an already established GD phenotype. The gene therapy approach generated considerably higher GCase activity than transplantation of WT BM. Strikingly, both therapeutic modalities normalized glucosylceramide levels and practically no infiltration of Gaucher cells could be observed in BM, spleen, and liver, demonstrating correction at 5–6 months after treatment. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of gene therapy for type 1 GD in vivo. Our type 1 GD mice will serve as an excellent tool in the continued efforts toward development of safe and efficient cell and gene therapy for type 1 GD.
Should immunonutrition become routine in critically ill patients? A systematic review of the evidence.

CONTEXT Several nutrients have been shown to influence immunologic and inflammatory responses in humans. Whether these effects translate into an improvement in clinical outcomes in critically ill patients remains unclear. OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between enteral nutrition supplemented with immune-enhancing nutrients and infectious complications and mortality rates in critically ill patients. DATA SOURCES The databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Biosis, and CINAHL were searched for articles published from 1990 to 2000. Additional data sources included the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register from 1990 to 2000, personal files, abstract proceedings, and relevant reference lists of articles identified by database review. STUDY SELECTION A total of 326 titles, abstracts, and articles were reviewed. Primary studies were included if they were randomized trials of critically ill or surgical patients that evaluated the effect of enteral nutrition supplemented with some combination of arginine, glutamine, nucleotides, and omega-3 fatty acids on infectious complication and mortality rates compared with standard enteral nutrition, and included clinically important outcomes, such as mortality. DATA EXTRACTION Methodological quality of individual studies was scored and necessary data were abstracted in duplicate and independently. DATA SYNTHESIS Twenty-two randomized trials with a total of 2419 patients compared the use of immunonutrition with standard enteral nutrition in surgical and critically ill patients. With respect to mortality, immunonutrition was associated with a pooled risk ratio (RR) of 1.10 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.93-1.31). Immunonutrition was associated with lower infectious complications (RR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.54-0.80). Since there was significant heterogeneity across studies, we examined several a priori subgroup analyses. We found that studies using commercial formulas with high arginine content were associated with a significant reduction in infectious complications and a trend toward a lower mortality rate compared with other immune-enhancing diets. Studies of surgical patients were associated with a significant reduction in infectious complication rates compared with studies of critically ill patients. In studies of critically ill patients, studies with a high-quality score were associated with increased mortality and a significant reduction in infectious complication rates compared with studies with a low-quality score. CONCLUSION Immunonutrition may decrease infectious complication rates but it is not associated with an overall mortality advantage. However, the treatment effect varies depending on the intervention, the patient population, and the methodological quality of the study.
Exciting and interesting: issues in the generation of binomials

We discuss the preferred ordering of elements of binomials (e.g., conjunctions such as fish and chips, lager and lime, exciting and interesting) and provide a detailed critique of Benor and Levy's probabilistic account of English binomials. In particular, we discuss the extent to which their approach is suitable as a model of language generation. We describe resources we have developed for the investigation of binomials using a combination of parsed corpora and very large unparsed corpora. We discuss the use of these resources in developing models of binomial ordering, concentrating in particular on the evaluation issues which arise.
Formal handling of threats and rewards in a negotiation dialogue

Argumentation plays a key role in finding a compromise during a negotiation dialogue. It may lead an agent to change its goals/preferences and force it to respond in a particular way. Two types of arguments are mainly used for that purpose: threats and rewards. For example, if an agent receives a threat, this agent may accept the offer even if it is not fully "acceptable" for it (because otherwise really important goals would be threatened). The contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, a logical setting that handles these two types of arguments is provided. More precisely, logical definitions of threats and rewards are proposed together with their weighting systems. These definitions take into account that negotiation dialogues involve not only agents' beliefs (of various strengths), but also their goals (having maybe different priorities), as well as the beliefs about the goals of other agents.On the other hand, a "simple" protocol for handling such arguments in a negotiation dialogue is given. This protocol shows when such arguments can be presented, how they are handled, and how they lead agents to change their goals and behaviors.
Happiness: Hedonic and Eudemonic Perspectives and Dynamics

Abstract The aim of this paper is to review hedonic and eudemonic perspectives of happiness in order to inquire happiness as a multidimensional construct. In doing so, irrespective of philosophical deviations, we recognize possibilities of complementing hedonic and eudemonic variables of happiness in order to explain deep roots of the construct. Further, we observe a dynamic relationship between certain explicit and implicit variables and life happiness. Keywords: Happiness, Hedonism, Eudemonism Introduction We are living in an „age of paradox‟ where one facet of the world enjoys technologies of unimaginable sophistication while other facet of at least one billion people suffers without enough food to pass the day. On the other hand, even so called „economically developed countries‟ achieve greater productivity and material success yet along the way succumb to new issues of environment pollution, deterioration of ethical standards, unrest , man-made diseases i.e. obesity, diabetics, heart and brain attacks along with other illnesses of modern life. As an example, United State of America (USA) has achieved sticking economic progress and
Design-oriented steady-state analysis of LLC resonant converters based on FHA

The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive design methodology for an LLC resonant converter, based on a detailed quantitative analysis of the steady-state operation of the circuit. This analysis follows the first harmonic approximation (FHA) approach, which tremendously simplifies the system model, leading to a linear circuit, which can be dealt with through the classical complex AC-circuit analysis. Two of the major benefits of the LLC resonant topology are the ability of the power MOSFETs and secondary rectifiers to be soft-switched and the capability of operating down to zero load. The design-oriented steady-state analysis presented in this paper addresses these two constraints quantitatively, allowing the designer to derive the circuit parameters which not only fulfil input voltage and output power specification data but also soft-switching and no-load operation constraints
Is No News (Perceived as) Bad News? An Experimental Investigation of Information Disclosure

This paper uses laboratory experiments to directly test a central prediction of disclosure theory: that strategic forces can lead those who possess private information to voluntarily provide it. In a simple sender-receiver game, we find that senders disclose favorable information, but withhold unfavorable information. The degree to which senders withhold information is strongly related to their stated beliefs about receiver actions, and their stated beliefs are accurate on average. Receiver actions are also strongly related to their stated beliefs, but their actions and beliefs suggest that many are insufficiently skeptical about nondisclosed information in the absence of repeated feedback. (JEL C70, D82, D83)
Swimming blind : A microscopic pursuit problem

indicators of water quality. In healthy systems, they are relatively sparse, but in algal blooms their density is found to be greater by two orders of magnitude [5]. Presently, there is very little understood about the connections between environmental parameters such as sunlight, nitrogen content, pH, the presence of prey, and dinoflagellate behavior. The purpose of this project is to try to understand one piece of the puzzle, dinoflagellate predatory behavior. Dinoflagellates are mixotrophs, meaning that they sustain themselves through photosynthesis and by grazing on prey organisms who are also mobile. The latter mode is more efficient. Predation is possible when a predator comes in physical contact with prey. The prey move similarly to predator. Dinoflagellates have no brain and no complex sensory organs, and are best considered simple machines. The flagella are driven by molecular motors that respond to chemical cues in the water, and it can be shown that simple motion like this can track up or down chemical gradients without being able to sense the gradient instantaneously [2]. Furthermore, it has been observed that the dinoflagellate Karodinium veneficum expresses a toxin when it comes in contact with prey. This karlotoxin is linked to two important processes. First, the toxin immobilizes the prey. Second, the toxin changes predator swimming behavior [5]. The key tasks are:
Robertson Type Theorems for Frames

We extend Robertson's theorem to apply to frames generated by the action of a discrete, countable abelian unitary group. Within this setup we use Stone's theorem and the theory of spectral multiplicity to analyze wandering frame collections. Motivated by wavelet theory, we explicitly apply our results to the action of the integers given by translations on $\ltwo$. This yields a new functional analytic method of constructing a wavelet from a multiresolution analysis.
Catalyst: GPU-assisted rapid memory deduplication in virtualization environments

Content based page sharing techniques improve memory efficiency in virtualized systems by identifying and merging identical pages. Kernel Same-page Merging (KSM), a Linux kernel utility for page sharing, sequentially scans memory pages of virtual machines to deduplicate pages. Sequential scanning of pages has several undesirable side effects---wasted CPU cycles when no sharing opportunities exist, and rate of discovery of sharing being dependent on the scanning rate and corresponding CPU availability. In this work, we exploit presence of GPUs on modern systems to enable rapid memory sharing through targeted scanning of pages. Our solution, Catalyst, works in two phases, the first where pages of virtual machines are processed by the GPU to identify likely pages for sharing and a second phase that performs page-level similarity checks on a targeted set of shareable pages. Opportunistic usage of the GPU to produce sharing hints enables rapid and low-overhead duplicate detection, and sharing of memory pages in virtualization environments. We evaluate Catalyst against various benchmarks and workloads to demonstrate that Catalyst can achieve higher memory sharing in lesser time compared to different scan rate configurations of KSM, at lower or comparable compute costs.
Preparation of Iron-Nickel Alloy Nanostructures via Two Cationic Pyridinium Derivatives as Soft Templates

In this paper, crystalline iron-nickel alloy nanostructures were successfully prepared from two cationic pyridinium derivatives as soft templates in solution. The crystal structure and micrograph of FeNi alloy nanostructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, and the content was confirmed by energy-dispersive spectrometry. The results indicated that the as-prepared nanostructures showed slightly different diameter ranges with the change of cationic pyridinium derivatives on the surface. The experimental data indicated that the adsorption of cationic pyridinium compounds on the surface of particles reduces the surface charge, leading to an isotropic distribution of the residual surface charges. The magnetic behaviours of as-prepared FeNi alloy nanostructures exhibited disparate behaviours, which could be attributed to their grain sizes and distinctive structures. The present work may give some insight into the synthesis and character of new alloy nanomaterials with special nanostructures using new soft templates.
Cholesterol-tethered platinum II-based supramolecular nanoparticle increases antitumor efficacy and reduces nephrotoxicity

Nanoscale drug delivery vehicles have been harnessed extensively as carriers for cancer chemotherapeutics. However, traditional pharmaceutical approaches for nanoformulation have been a challenge with molecules that exhibit incompatible physicochemical properties, such as platinum-based chemotherapeutics. Here we propose a paradigm based on rational design of active molecules that facilitate supramolecular assembly in the nanoscale dimension. Using cisplatin as a template, we describe the synthesis of a unique platinum (II) tethered to a cholesterol backbone via a unique monocarboxylato and O→Pt coordination environment that facilitates nanoparticle assembly with a fixed ratio of phosphatidylcholine and 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine-N-[amino (polyethylene glycol)-2000]. The nanoparticles formed exhibit lower IC50 values compared with carboplatin or cisplatin in vitro, and are active in cisplatin-resistant conditions. Additionally, the nanoparticles exhibit significantly enhanced in vivo antitumor efficacy in murine 4T1 breast cancer and in K-RasLSL/+/Ptenfl/fl ovarian cancer models with decreased systemic- and nephro-toxicity. Our results indicate that integrating rational drug design and supramolecular nanochemistry can emerge as a powerful strategy for drug development. Furthermore, given that platinum-based chemotherapeutics form the frontline therapy for a broad range of cancers, the increased efficacy and toxicity profile indicate the constructed nanostructure could translate into a next-generation platinum-based agent in the clinics.
Increasing Learning in an Agile Environment: Lessons Learned in an Agile Team

Learning is an important part of the software development process. There are many advantages for developers willing to learn: increased internal and external quality of the produced software, and a reduced learning curve as beginners become high-skilled developers much faster than usual. However, learning is not taken seriously by many teams. This paper shows how to build a learning environment by doing some well-known practices, such as Book Club, Brown Bags, Dojo sessions, Pair Programming, Open Spaces, etc. It also presents some adaptations we developed in these techniques in order to improve their effects in our work environment.
Motor Imagery and Action Observation as Effective Tools for Physical Therapy

Motor imagery and action observation facilitate motor recovery of patients because both the motor imagery and the action observation share the activation of cortical neural networks implicated in movement execution. Specifically, imagery, observation, and execution activate the medial parietal area of the brain located between the parieto‐ occipital sulcus and the posterior end of the cingulate sulcus. This chapter reviews the neural mechanisms and clinical studies of motor imagery and action observation and discusses the applications in physical therapy.