Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arctic smoke ? record high air pollution levels in the European Arctic due to agricultural fires in Eastern Europe

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Arctic smoke ? record high air pollution levels in the European Arctic due to agricultural fires in Eastern Europe A. Stohl, T. Berg, J. F. Burkhart, A. M. Fjæraa, C. Forster, A. Herber, Ø. Hov, C. Lunder, W. W. Mcmillan, S. Oltmans, et al.
MCEmu: A Framework for Software Development and Performance Analysis of Multicore Systems

Developing software for heterogeneous multicore systems is particularly challenging even for experienced developers. While emulators have proven useful to application development, very few heterogeneous multicore emulators have been made available by vendors so far, as building an emulator for a heterogeneous multicore system has been a time-consuming and difficult task. Thus, we proposed a framework, called MCEmu, to speed up the process of building a heterogeneous multicore emulator by integrating existing and/or new processor emulators. MCEmu is designed to help system and application development, with a basic multicore board support package, an interprocessor communication library, and tools for debugging, tracing, and performance monitoring. In addition, MCEmu can run on a multicore host system to accelerate the emulation of data parallel applications. We show that MCEmu can be very useful for developing system software before the system becomes available, as it has helped us catch numerous functional and performance bugs which could have been hard to find. In this article, we present the design of MCEmu and demonstrate its capabilities with our case studies.
Science: the rules of the game

Popper’s suggestion of taking methodological norms as conventions is examined from the point of view of game theory. The game of research is interpreted as a game of persuasion, in the sense that every scientists tries to advance claims, and that her winning the game consists in her colleagues accepting some of those claims as the conclusions of some arguments. Methodological norms are seen as elements in a contract established amongst researchers, that says what inferential moves are legitimate or compulsory in that game. Norms are classified in three groups: rules of internal inference (from claims to claims), entry norms (from events to claims), and exit norms (from claims to actions). It is argued that the value of a set of norms depends on how efficient they are in leading a scientific community to accept claims ranking high in a consensuated scale of epistemic value, and in giving each member of the community a reasonable expectation of winning some games. 1. VIENNA, 1934: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN. “Methodological rules are here regarded as conventions. They might be described as the rules of the game of empirical science”. This is one of the main statements in Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959, p. 53). The theory of science developed there is basically a theory of the scientific method: it analyses what procedures in scientific research are right. Popper’s basic idea was that this analysis can not be deduced from logic alone -as perhaps positivists and Cartesians might have tried to do-, for we need also to take into account the goals of science: the ‘right’ norms of the scientific method are those that are more efficient in approaching us to those goals. Hence, according to Sir Karl, science can be conceived as a game defined by certain rules; it might have had different rules (this is why they are ‘conventions’), but this does 1 Facultad de Filosofia. UNED. Madrid. E-mail: jpzb@fsof.uned. es. I thank participants in the Tilburg’s workshop on Formal Approaches to Social Epistemology, and in the London School of Economics “Choice Group”, for helpful comments.
Ordering History Through the Timeline

History is a key subject in most educational system in Western countries, and there is ongoing concern about the the degree of historical knowledge and historical sensibility that students obtain after their high school graduation. This paper proposes a simple linetime test for quantitatively measuring a human sense of history. The paper reports the results of the test administered to approximately 250 Italian university students. There are two empirical results. First, students have remarkable difficulties in ordering basic events over the time line, with the largest mistakes observed around the events that took place in the Middle Age. Second, the paper uncovers a statistical regularity in the test performance across gender, with female subjects featuring a statistical significant and quantitatively sizable downward score. The gender difference is surprising, since existing literature on differences in cognitive abilities across gender suggests that female subjects outperform male subjects in memory related tests. The paper shows also that the gender difference survives to a variety of sub periods, and falls by only 20 percent when we distinguish between violent and non violent events.
Ion channels: genetics and as a targets for antiepileptic drugs

Dravet syndrome is caused by mutations of the SCN1A gene that encodes voltage-gated sodium channel alpha-1 subunit. SCN1A-knock-in mouse with a disease-relevant nonsense mutation that we generated reproduced the disease phenotypes. Both homozygous and heterozygous knock-in mice developed epileptic seizures within the fi rst postnatal month. Our immunohistochemical studies showed that in wild-type mice Nav1.1 is dominantly expressed in parvalbumin-positive inhibitory interneurons (PV cells), intensely in its axons and moderately in somata, and mostly not observed in pyramidal cells nor other types of interneurons including somatostatin-positive and calretinin-positive cells. These results suggest that Nav1.1 is largely expressed in PV interneurons and plays critical roles in their spike output, and that impaired function of PV cells would be the cellular basis of Dravet syndrome. PV interneurons and Nav1.1 in those cells would be critical targets for antiepileptic drugs.
Functional Characterization of N-Terminally GFP-Tagged GLP-1 Receptor

The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1 receptor) mediates important effects on peripheral tissues and the central nervous system. It seems one of the most promising therapeutic targets for treatment of diabetes mellitus type 2. Surprisingly, very little is known about the cellular mechanisms that regulate its function in vivo. One of the approaches to study receptor dynamics, expression, or signaling is using GFP-tagged fluorescent proteins. In this study, we synthesized and characterized N-terminally GFP-tagged GLP-1 (GFP-GLP-1) receptor in CHO cells. We demonstrated that GFP-GLP-1 receptor is weakly expressed in the plasma membranes and is functionally coupled to adenylyl cyclase via heterotrimeric G-proteins, similarly as its wild type.
CIDR: A Cache Inspired Area-Efficient DRAM Resilience Architecture against Permanent Faults

Faulty cells have become major problems in cost-sensitive main-memory DRAM devices. Conventional solutions to reduce device failure rates due to cells with permanent faults, such as populating spare rows and relying on errorcorrecting codes, have had limited success due to high area overheads. In this paper, we propose CIDR, a novel cache-inspired DRAM resilience architecture, which substantially reduces the area overhead of handling bit errors from these faulty cells. A DRAM device adopting CIDR has a small cache next to its I/O pads to replace accesses to the addresses that include the faulty cells with ones that correspond to the cache data array. We minimize the energy overhead of accessing the cache tags for every read or write by adding a Bloom filter in front of the cache. The augmented cache is programmed once during the testing phase and is out of the critical path on normal accesses because both cache and DRAM arrays are accessed in parallel, making CIDR transparent to existing processor-memory interfaces. Compared to the conventional architecture relying on spare rows, CIDR lowers the area overhead of achieving equal failure rates over a wide range of single-bit error rates, such as 23.6× lower area overhead for a bit-error rate of 10-5 and a device failure rate of 10-3.
Growth hormone mRNA expression in the pituitary of Bos indicus and Bos taurus x Bos indicus crossbred young bulls treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin.

The effects of breed and of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) treatment on growth hormone gene expression were studied in young bulls. The experiment was completely randomized in a [2 x 2]-factorial arrangement, using two levels of rbST (0 or 250 mg/animal/14 days), and two breed groups (Nelore and Simmental x Nelore crossbred). A cDNA encoding Bos indicus growth hormone was cloned and sequenced for use as a probe in Northern and dot blot analyses. Compared to the Bos taurus structural gene, the Bos indicus cDNA was found to begin 21 bases downstream from the transcription initiation site and had only two discrepancies (C to T at position 144-His and T to C at position 354-Phe), without changes in the polypeptide sequence. However, two amino acid substitutions were found for Bubalus spp. , which belong to the same tribe. The rbST treatment did not change any of the characteristics evaluated (body and pituitary gland weights, growth hormone mRNA expression level). Crossbred animals had significantly higher body weight and heavier pituitaries than Nelore cattle. Pituitary weight was proportional to body weight in both breed groups. Growth hormone mRNA expression in the pituitary was similar (P>0.075) for both breed and hormonal treatment groups, but was 31.9% higher in the pure Nelore group, suggesting that growth hormone gene transcription regulation differs among these breeds.
Exploiting Six Sigma by Using DTS

Six Sigma has been very successfully applied in manufacturing. Is it also applicable to software, and ICT? Six Sigma is about cost reduction by eliminating defects. Six Sigma uses the following three principles: Focus on customers, Process orientation, Leadership based on metrics The big question as to whether Six Sigma can really be applied as successfully in the software industry as it was to manufacturing is still being debated. The real challenge is to see if it can be implemented without reinventing the wheel. There is also disagreement among leaders in the software industry about the need for Six Sigma. Applying Six Sigma to software development makes software projects transparent to both management and customers. Transparency requires an important cultural change. As a result, after transparency is achieved, completing accurate project estimations while meeting both deadlines and customer requirements becomes a lot easier. I had implemented DTS as a prototype by using techniques of six sigma to track an error. With the help of graph I also show the no. of bug incremented or decremented versus date of track. Key Terms-DTS, Six Sigma
Identification of the Pesticide Fluorescence Spectroscopy based on the PCA and KNN

The organic pesticide can emit fluorescent light when it is excitation by the ultraviolet ray, carbonates pesticide can identification by the three-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy technology. Statistics based on the apparent feature is limitation to identification of the complex Pesticide Fluorescence Spectroscopy. In order to realize identification of the diversity pesticide which Fluorescence Spectroscopy have more overlapping, pesticide spectroscopy is compression and dimensionality reduces by Principal component analysis (PCA). Spectroscopy character of the various objects is extracted. KNN classify method is combined to realize the sort identifications of carbaryl, mipcin, furadantin and aldicard are implementation. The sorting result is visualization by parallel coordinate chart. Experiment result indicates this method is base on utility information and effectiveness dimensionality reduction dispose to high dimensional spectroscopy information. Sorting speed is much higher. The identification rate reaches 97 percent. The result of identification is better.
Semantic ratings and heuristic similarity for collaborative filtering

Collaborative filtering systems make recommendations based on ratings of user preference. Usually, the ratings are unidimensional (e.g. like vs. dislike), and can either explicitly elicited from users or, more typically, are implicitly generated from observations of user behavior. This research examines multi-dimensional or semantic ratings in which a system gets information about the reason behind a preference. Such multidimensional ratings can be projected onto a single dimension, but experiments show that metrics in which the semantic meaning of each rating is taken into account have markedly superior performance.
Photo-Elicitation Interviews with Vulnerable Populations: Practical and Ethical Considerations

ABSTRACT Photo-elicitation is a qualitative interview technique where researchers solicit responses, reactions, and insights from participants by using photographs or other images as stimuli. Images can be researcher-generated or participant-generated and each has particular benefits and challenges. Though not new, the use of images within criminology is an underused technique. In this paper we advocate the use of photo-elicitation techniques suggesting that they offer a powerful addition to standard data collection and presentation techniques. In making our case, we draw on our experiences from an 18-month long photo-ethnography of people living in rural Alabama who use methamphetamine. The ethnography consisted of formal interviews and informal observations with 52 participants and photography of 29 of them. While we draw on our overall experiences from the project we focus specifically on the photographs generated by, and taken of, one key participant—Alice. We demonstrate the benefits and challenges of using photo elicitation interviews with vulnerable individuals such as Alice, by considering themes such as representation, empowerment and emotionality. Additionally, we highlight the practical and ethical issues that confront researchers who incorporate the visual into their research.
A specific and sensitive assay for blood levels of glycated CD59: A novel biomarker for diabetes

Increasing evidence links the complement system with complications of human diabetes. The complement regulatory protein CD59, an inhibitor of formation of membrane attack complex (MAC), is inhibited by hyperglycemia‐induced glycation fostering increased deposition of MAC, a major effector of complement‐mediated tissue damage. CD59, an ubiquitous GPI‐anchored membrane protein, is shed from cell membranes by phospholipases generating a soluble form present in blood and urine. We established an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure serum/plasma glycated human CD59 (hCD59) (GCD59) and evaluated its potential as a diabetes biomarker. We used a synthetic peptide strategy to generate (a) a mouse monoclonal antibody to capture hCD59, (b) a rabbit monoclonal antibody to detect GCD59, and (c) a GCD59 surrogate for assay standardization. ELISA conditions were optimized for precision, reproducibility, and clinical sensitivity. The clinical utility of the assay was initially evaluated in 24 subjects with or without diabetes and further validated in a study that included 100 subjects with and 90 subjects without a diagnosis of diabetes. GCD59 (a) was significantly higher in individuals with than in individual without diabetes, (b) was independently associated with HbA1c, and (c) identified individuals with diabetes with high specificity and sensitivity. We report the development and standardization of a novel, sensitive, and specific ELISA for measuring GCD59 in blood. The assay distinguished individuals with diabetes from those without, and showed strong correlation between GCD59 and HbA1c. Because GCD59 likely contributes to the pathogenesis of diabetes complications, measurement of blood levels of GCD59 may be useful in the diagnosis and management of diabetes. Am. J. Hematol. 88:670–676, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Area-universal circuits with constant slowdown

An area-universal VLSI circuit can be programmed to emulate every circuit of a given area, but at cost of lower area-time performance. In particular, if a circuit with area-time bounds (A,T) emulated with a universal circuit with bounds (A/sub u/,T/sub u/), we say that the universal circuit has slowup A/sub u//A and slowdown T/sub u//T. A central question in VLSI theory is to investigate the inherent costs and tradeoffs of universal circuit designs. Prior to this paper, universal designs with O(1) blowup and O(log A) slowdown for area-A circuits were known. Universal designs for area-A circuits of O(/spl radic/A/sup 1+/spl epsiv//logA) nodes, with O(A/sup /spl epsiv//) blowup and O(log log A) slowdown, had also been developed. However, the existence of universal circuits with O(1) slowdown and relatively small blowup was an open question. In this paper, we settle this question by designing an area-universal circuit U/sub A//sup /spl epsiv// with O(1//spl epsiv/) slowdown and O(/spl epsiv//sup 2/A/sup /spl epsiv// log/sup 4/A) blowup, for any value of the parameter /spl epsiv/, 1/log A/spl les//spl epsiv//spl les/1. By varying, we obtain universal circuits which operate at different points in the spectrum of the slowdown-slowup tradeoff. In particular, when /spl epsiv/ is chosen to be a constant, our universal circuit yields O(1) slowdown.
Vision-based hyper-real-time object tracker for robotic applications

Fast vision-based object and person tracking is important for various applications in mobile robotics and Human-Robot Interaction. While current state-of-the-art methods use descriptive features for visual tracking, we propose a novel approach using a sparse template based feature set, which is drawn from homogeneous regions on the object to be tracked. Using only a small number of simple features, without complex descriptors in combination with logarithmic-search, the tracker performs at hyper-real-time on HD-images without the use of parallelized hardware. Detailed benchmark experiments show that it outperforms most other state-of-the-art approaches for real-time object and person tracking in quality and runtime. In the experiments we also show the robustness of the tracker and evaluate the effects of different initialization methods, feature sets, and parameters on the tracker. Although we focus on the scenario of person and object tracking in robot applications, the proposed tracker can be used for a variety of other tracking tasks.
Annual Landsat analysis of urban growth of Nanjing City from 1980 to 2013

The spatial-temporal evolution of impervious surface expansion is essential for an better and powerful understanding of the urbanization process and its impact on environment and climate change. In this paper, a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) algorithm which is based on a supervised classification using ENVI's native Decision Tree tool is applied for retrieving continuous, long-term expansion of impervious surface using annual medium-resolution satellite images. The main goal of this paper is to achieve annual, long-term impervious surface maps from a corresponding time series of images collected by multiple sensors. Hence, three decades of medium-resolution satellite data of Nanjing city from the Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) is used to extract annual, long-term impervious surface maps for quantitatively evaluating the process of regional urbanization. Results show that the areas of annual impervious surface are all overestimated but the trend of growth is consistent with statistical data. The overall accuracies vary in different years from 86.2% to 94.1% and the commission and omission errors for the impervious type are about 12.6% and 6.2%.
Optical Orthogonal Codes from Singer Groups

We construct some new families of optical orthogonal codes that are asymptotically optimal. In particular, for any prescribed value of λ, we construct infinite families of (n, w, λ)-OOCs that in each case are asymptotically optimal. Our constructions rely on various techniques in finite projective spaces involving normal rational curves and Singer groups. These constructions generalize and improve previous constructions of OOCs, in particular, those from conics [14] and arcs [1].
Variations in the Runoff-Sediment Relationship of the Weihe River Basin Based on the Copula Function

This study investigates the runoff-sediment relationship (RSR) of the Weihe River, a sandy waterway originating from the Loess Plateau, and considers the potential variations in RSR under an evolving environment. The double mass curve method was used to investigate RSR inflection points at six hydrologic stations located in the Weihe River basin (WRB) spanning the period from 1956 to 2010. Because of its ability to accurately define nonlinear and asymmetric correlations between variables, the Copula function provided the joint probability distributions and revealed the joint probabilities of annual runoff and sediment yield through different periods. The results indicated: (1) The sediment yield and runoff exhibit decreasing trends, which was principally related to human activity such as soil and water conservation measures, water projects and industrial and domestic water use, (2) the RSR inflection points principally occurred around 1983 at the Weijiabu, Xianyang, Huaxian and Zhuangtou stations, whereas they were non-significant at the Linjiacun and Zhangjiashan stations. Changes in RSR are attributed to the irregular effect of human activity reducing the runoff and sediment output; and (3) the joint probability distributions of annual runoff and sediment yield varied under an evolving environment and were characterized by spatial variability, which is more evident in the mainstream areas of the Weihe River than in the tributary regions.
Controlling Physical Layer Parameters for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

This thesis investigates the use of software radios for ad-hoc networking to improve spectrum utilization and battery life. An API that provides a mechanism for a network node to request services from the software radio layer and a framework that permits a physical layer to be constructed based on these needs are also presented. In addition, this framework is used to analyze the 802.11 wireless standard to identify some of its limitations. Thesis Supervisor: Robert Morris Title: Assistant Professor