Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
2016 Ieee International Conference on Big Data (big Data) Analyzing the Performance of Data Replication and Data Partitioning in the Cloud: the Beowulf Approach

—Applications deployed in the Cloud usually come with dedicated performance and availability requirements. This can be achieved by replicating data across several sites and / or by partitioning data. Data replication allows to parallelize read requests and thus to decrease data access latency, but induces significant overhead for the synchronization of updates. Partitioning, in contrast, is highly beneficial if all the data accessed by an application is located at the same site, but again necessitates coordination if distributed transactions are needed to serve applications. In this paper, we analyze three protocols for distributed data management in the Cloud, namely Read-One-Write-All-Available (ROWAA), Majority Quorum (MQ) and Data Partitioning (DP) – all in a configuration that guarantees strong consistency. We introduce BEOWULF, a meta protocol based on a comprehensive cost model that integrates the three protocols and that dynamically selects the protocol with the lowest latency for a given workload. In the evaluation, we compare the prediction of the BEOWULF cost model with a baseline evaluation. The results nicely show the effectiveness of the analytical model and the precision in selecting the best suited protocol for a given workload.
Phonological Encoding in Reading Aloud Persian: ERP Evidence for the Phonological Basis of the Masked Onset Priming Effect

The current study investigates reading aloud (i.e. pronouncing) words in Persian, a language that omits some of its vowels in its script. A word reading task employing a masked priming paradigm did not yield any differences in speech onset latencies between an onset-matching and an onset-mismatching condition. However, eventrelated potentials (ERPs) did reveal a difference in amplitude between these two conditions, between 190 and 290 ms after target word onset. This finding specifies the masked onset priming effect (MOPE) temporally more precisely and suggests, at least in Persian, the simultaneous activation of both the non-lexical grapheme-to-phoneme and the lexical route in the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model of reading aloud.
Food Stamp Participation and Child Outcomes : The Effects of Federal Food Assistance Programs on Children ’ s Health , Behavior , and Academic Performance

Among those who participate in federal food assistance programs, children comprise an overwhelming portion. While children represent only a quarter of the US population, they account for 40 percent of Americans in poverty and almost 70 percent of those on welfare. Unfortunately, this puts children at a disproportionate risk for an abundance of adverse outcomes – ranging from minor health problems to childhood obesity, negative behavioral, psychosocial, and academic outcomes – which are likely to affect the poor and food insecure population. Because such adverse effects exist among the low-income and food insecure populations, and because these are the populations most likely to enroll in federal food assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program (FSP) – of which children comprise a disproportionate percentage – the relationship between food stamp program participation, and children’s health, academic, and psychosocial outcomes is of much interest for policymakers who aim to reduce these negative effects among such a vulnerable demographic. Using 2007 data from Transition to Adulthood (TA) and the Child Development Supplement (CDS), as well as supplementary data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a nationally representative longitudinal study, the effect of food stamp participation on obesity, body weight, academic achievement, and psychosocial outcomes is analyzed for children and young adults aged 10 to 23 years. The findings will generate policy implications for potential modifications of SNAP which will reduce the negative health, academic, and behavioral problems potentially associated with food stamp program participation among children.
Adolescent Involvement in Extracurricular Activities: Influences on Leadership Skills

Study examined adolescents’ participation in sports, school, and community extracurricular activities to assess the influence of different involvement roles and adult support on leadership skills. The study found that males and females who perceived their adult support more positively had more positive perceptions of their leadership skills. Findings suggest adolescents’ perceptions towards their leadership skills are influenced by extracurricular activity involvement roles and the support of their parents and other adults. The findings contribute to future school and community based prevention and intervention programs, suggesting the importance of adolescent leadership involvement at all grade levels and the influence of adult support on adolescents’ perception toward their leadership skills. Educators should consider facilitating youth leadership through extracurricular activities involving younger high school students. This affords the opportunity for youth to develop critical skills early and put into practice what
Security policies in pervasive systems: design of a modular security policy framework for semantic, multi-domain, service-oriented pervasive systems

Pervasive systems denote architectures of distributed and dynamically orchestrated components and build the basis for “intelligent environments”, i.e. context-aware applications which combine ubiquitous networked sensors and services. While the advantages of such loosely coupled architectures are not to be denied, automatically establishing and configuring mechanisms like secure communication protocols or access control is a challenge. Security policies are a way to separate non-functional requirements from the functional implementation of a system. However, most traditional policy models do not take into account the dynamic nature of pervasive systems and fall short of addressing issues like extensibility, reasoning over rules, as well as negotiating and aligning policies across domain boundaries. The contribution of this thesis is the design of a policy framework for pervasive systems which is build around an extensible description logic based core policy model and a modular software architecture. Based on the core framework, we propose and evaluate different strategies to address four typical policy challenges in pervasive systems: first, we show how developers can create increasingly abstract policy models by extending the built-in core model of the framework with additional concepts and relations, and show how to validate model constraints. Second, we propose an advancement of the event-conditionaction (ECA) pattern which allows users to write goal-based policies for autonomous reconfigurations of security mechanisms. Third, we show how metapolicies can be used to align decisions from composed policy domains. Fourth, we investigate strategies to allow parties to negotiate policy decisions considering individual preferences. Specifically, we explore the integration of micro-economic approaches like voting and auction protocols into the policy framework. By a prototype implementation of the framework and its add-on modules, we could show that the concept of an extensible, description-logic based policy model is in fact practicable and that it can be used to control security mechanisms in “self-protecting”, i.e. adaptive, pervasive systems.
Efficient Search of Multidimensional B-Trees

Data in relational databases is frequently stored and retrieved using B-Trees. In &cis,ion isugprt applications the key of the B-Tree frequently involves the concatenation of several fields of the relationdl’ table. During retrieval, it is desirable to be able to access a small subset of the table based’ on partial key information, where some fields of the key may either not be present, involve ranges, or lists ‘of values. It is also advantageous to altow. this type, of access-with gen&il expressions involving any combination of disjuncts on key columns. This paper &scribes a method whereby BTrees can be eficiently used to retrieve small subsets, thus avoiding large scans of potentially huge tables. Another benefit is the ability of this method to reduce the need for additional secondary indexes, thus saving space, maintenance cost, and random accesses.
The vascular depression hypothesis: The influence of age on the relationship between cerebrovascular risk factors and depressive symptoms in community dwelling elders

The current study examined the moderating effect of age on the relationship between cerebrovascular risk factors (CVRF's) and depressive symptoms. Consistent with the broader vascular depression model, it was hypothesized that CVRF's would demonstrate a stronger link to depressive symptoms in the older age groups than among the younger age groups. Data from 2916 adults from the Resources, Stress, and Older Persons Panel Study were utilized. Path analysis was used to estimate direct and indirect effects (via health related symptoms and limitations) of CVRF's on depressive symptoms. Path analyses were estimated separately on four age groups: 50–64 years old, 65–74 years old, 75–84 years old, and 85 years and older. CVRF's and other comorbid medical conditions were highly predictive of health related symptoms and limitations across the four age groups. Health related symptoms and limitations were strongly linked to depressive symptoms and mediated the influence of medical illnesses (both vascular and nonvascular) on depressive symptoms. However, CVRF's exerted a unique effect on depressive symptoms in the oldest-old group (i.e., 85+). Among those over the age of 85, a greater number of CVRF's was associated with more severe depressive symptoms independent of health related symptoms/limitations and other comorbid medical conditions. Health related symptoms and limitations mediated the relationship between CVRF's and depression in individuals under 85. That is, the influence of vascular burden on depression is predominately indirect via health related limitations. But among those over the age of 85, vascular disease had a unique contribution on depression, even after controlling for other comorbid medical illness and health related limitations. This finding supports the vascular depression hypothesis and is consistent with prior work suggesting vascular disease may exert its greatest effect on depression in the context of increasing frailty.
Technology and the Demand for Skill:An Analysis of within and between Firm Differences

We estimate the effects of technology investments on the demand for skilled workers using longitudinally integrated employer-employee data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program infrastructure files spanning two Economic Censuses (1992 and 1997). We estimate the distribution of human capital and its observable and unobservable components within each business for each year from 1992 to 1997. We measure technology using variables from the Annual Survey of Manufactures and the Business Expenditures Survey (services, wholesale and retail trade), both administered during the 1992 Economic Census. Static and partial adjustment models are fit. There is a strong positive empirical relationship between advanced technology and skill in a cross-sectional analysis of businesses in both sectors. The more comprehensive measures of skill reveal that advanced technology interacts with each component of skill quite differently: firms that use advanced technology are more likely to use high-ability workers, but less likely to use high-experience workers. These results hold even when we control for unobservable heterogeneity by means of a selection correction and by using a partial adjustment specification.
Viewing the interpersonal mistreatment literature through a temporal lens

Given increasing awareness of time’s critical role, we assess the current position of time in the workplace mistreatment literature. Focusing on four mistreatment constructs (viz., abusive supervision, workplace bullying, workplace incivility, and social undermining) found in the organizational psychology literature, our search revealed 266 studies that have empirically examined the consequences of these forms of interpersonal mistreatment. We examine and critique these studies, finding that with a few exceptions, most have failed to design and test theoretical relationships in a manner consistent with construct definitions. As interpersonal mistreatment research has neglected the role of time, we conclude that the substantial number of existing studies offer limited insight into the true nature of mistreatment’s consequences over time. We go on to elaborate on the types of theoretical insights that might emerge when a temporal lens (objective time and/or subjective time) is adopted by mistreatment researchers.
The Involvement of the Pregnane X Receptor in Hepatic Gene Regulation during Inflammation in Mice

Inflammation and proinflammatory cytokines suppress the expression of several hepatic transporters and metabolic enzymes, often resulting in cholestatic liver disease. However, mechanism(s) of this down-regulation have not been fully elucidated. As the pregnane X receptor (PXR) is involved in inducing many of these hepatic proteins, it is possible that PXR is also involved in their down-regulation during inflammation. Thus, we compared the effect of inflammation on hepatic gene regulation in wild-type (PXR+/+) versus PXR-null (PXR-/-) mice. Treatment of PXR+/+ but not PXR-/- mice with the PXR activators 5-pregnen-3β-ol-20-one-16α-carbonitrile (PCN) or 17β-hydroxy-11β-[4-dimethylamino phenyl]-17α-[1-propynyl] estra-4,9-dien-3-one (RU486) resulted in increased mRNA levels of bsep, mdr1a, mrp2, mrp3, oatp2, and cyp3a11, indicating involvement of PXR in their regulation. Significantly lower mRNA levels of bsep, mdr2, mrp2, mrp3, ntcp, oatp2, and cyp3a11 were found in endotoxin-treated PXR+/+ mice. In endotoxin-treated PXR-/- mice, the extent of mrp2 suppression was significantly diminished. Changes in MRP2 expression were supported by Western blot analysis. Although interleukin (IL)-6 imposed significant decreases in the expression of bsep, mrp2, and cyp3a11 in PXR+/+ mice, this was not observed in PXR-/- mice. Of note, significantly lower levels of PXR mRNA and protein were detected in endotoxin- and IL-6-treated PXR+/+ mice. In addition, endotoxin and IL-6 were also able to suppress PCN-mediated induction of bsep, mrp2, cyp3a11, and PXR. Taken together, our results suggest that PXR plays a role in the down-regulation of several hepatic proteins during inflammation.
Surgical Management Of Hydatid Disease Of The Liver: A Military Experience

Hydatid disease of the liver is highly prevalent in oriental countries including Turkey, in which their population live mostly in rural areas. The outcome of surgical methods used in the management of a cystic cavity in patients with hepatic hydatid disease was evaluated. Three hundred and forty consecutive patients who presented to Department of General Surgery between 1988 and 1996 with hepatic hydatid disease were reviewed retrospectively. In the first group surgical methods without drainage such as cystectomy (n = 11), capitonnage (n = 55), omentoplasty (n = 91) and capitonnage + omentoplasty (n = 53), in the second group surgery with drainage such as external drainage (n = 74), internal drainage (n = 7), and combined methods (n = 21) were applied. Symptoms, physical findings, types of surgical management, complication rate, hospitalisation period, mortality and recurrence rates were evaluated. Complication rate, average hospitalisation period, recurrence and mortality rates were 12.5%, 9.5 days, 9.9% and 0% respectively in patients without drainage and 63.7%, 26.5 days, 12.7% and 0.9% respectively in patients with drainage. It is concluded that surgical treatment of hydatid disease of the liver without drainage decreases postoperative complication rate and average hospitalisation period, and drainage or nondrainage of cystic cavity has no effect on recurrence.
Reduce and aggregate: similarity ranking in multi-categorical bipartite graphs

We study the problem of computing similarity rankings in large-scale multi-categorical bipartite graphs, where the two sides of the graph represent actors and items, and the items are partitioned into an arbitrary set of categories. The problem has several real-world applications, including identifying competing advertisers and suggesting related queries in an online advertising system or finding users with similar interests and suggesting content to them. In these settings, we are interested in computing on-the-fly rankings of similar actors, given an actor and an arbitrary subset of categories of interest. Two main challenges arise: First, the bipartite graphs are huge and often lopsided (e.g. the system might receive billions of queries while presenting only millions of advertisers). Second, the sheer number of possible combinations of categories prevents the pre-computation of the results for all of them. We present a novel algorithmic framework that addresses both issues for the computation of several graph-theoretical similarity measures, including # common neighbors, and Personalized PageRank. We show how to tackle the imbalance in the graphs to speed up the computation and provide efficient real-time algorithms for computing rankings for an arbitrary subset of categories. Finally, we show experimentally the accuracy of our approach with real-world data, using both public graphs and a very large dataset from Google AdWords.
Relevant past performance for selecting Web services

The selection of Web services is typically based on performance (or perception of performance) in past invocations. Instead of using the entire history of invocations in evaluating the performance of services, we use a portion of the history, selected with respect to the current user request. To facilitate this selection, we establish that it is feasible to infer the requirements and preferences of the users from the SLA.
Architecture for CORDIC algorithm realization without ROM lookup tables

This paper proposes an architecture for implementing the CORDIC algorithm. By decomposing an arbitrary rotation angle into a sequence of coarse angles (the tangent value of each of which is a power of 2) and a fine angle which is small enough, this architecture can be implemented by performing a sequence of shift-and-add operations in the radix-2 system without any ROM lookup table or real multiplication requirement. It is suitable to be designed in a pipelined architecture for performing high-speed operations.
Evaluation of Different Parasitological Techniques for Diagnosing Intestinal Parasites in Dogs

Intestinal nematodes are among the most common parasites of dogs, being Toxocara spp. and Ancylostoma spp. threats to public health due to their zoonotic potential. In this study, three parasitological diagnostic techniques for detecting the eggs/oocysts of canine intestinal parasites were evaluated. Fecal samples (n = 285) were collected from the environment (i.e. public streets, squares and homes) in Garanhuns, Pernambuco, Brazil. Samples were analyzed using the Willis-Mollay simple flotation technique, spontaneous sedimentation (Hoffman, Pons and Janer) and modified centrifugal flotation. Among the samples analyzed, 56.49% (161/285) showed eggs and/or oocysts of intestinal parasites. In particular, 44.21% (126/285) were detected by the Willis technique, 45.14% (121/268) by centrifugal flotation and 31.57% (90/285) by the Hoffmann technique. The kappa index indicated good concordance between the centrifugal flotation and Willis techniques (κ = 0.625), whereas fair concordance was observed between Hoffmann and Willis (κ = 0.480), and between Hoffman and centrifugal flotation (κ = 0.433). In conclusion, the centrifugal flotation technique showed high sensitivity towards detecting Ancylostoma spp. and Toxocara spp. (the most common parasites in this study) and could be used in association with the Willis technique to obtain safe diagnoses within routine laboratory analysis.
Cognitive processing in completely paralyzed patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Cognitive functions have never been studied before in completely paralyzed patients, probably due to the lack of the appropriate method. In this study, three male patients in the last stage of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are examined. They were totally locked‐in, i.e., incapable of any voluntary response including eye movements. Given this complete lack of motor expression, the method of event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) was used. The ERP recording was carried out at the patients’ bedside. In one patient indications of preserved cognitive abilities including adequate language comprehension were obtained. The data of the second patient also demonstrate a high degree of intactness of complex cognitive functions, but some ERP phenomena were consistently abnormal, which may be interpreted as a consequence of disease‐related degenerative processes. In the third patient no electrocortical response which might indicate higher cortical processing was found. This first ERP study of totally paralyzed patients shows that some of them can possess high, perhaps even normal, information processing capacity after a long period of severe immobility and artificial ventilation.
Organotypic slice cultures of human glioblastoma reveal different susceptibilities to treatments

Background Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common lethal brain tumor in human adults, with no major therapeutic breakthroughs in recent decades. Research is based mostly on human tumor cell lines deprived of their organotypic environment or inserted into immune-deficient animals required for graft survival. Here, we describe how glioblastoma specimens obtained from surgical biopsy material can be sectioned and transferred into cultures within minutes. Methods Slices were kept in 6-well plates, allowing direct observation, application of temozolomide, and irradiation. At the end of experiments, slice cultures were processed for histological analysis including hematoxylin-eosin staining, detection of proliferation (Ki67), apoptosis/cell death (cleaved caspase 3, propidium iodide), DNA double-strand breaks (γH2AX), and neural subpopulations. First clinical trials employed irradiation with the heavy ion carbon for the treatment of glioblastoma patients, but the biological effects and most effective dose regimens remain to be established. Therefore, we developed an approach to expose glioblastoma slice cultures to 12C and X-rays. Results We found preservation of the individual histopathology over at least 16 days. Treatments resulted in activation of caspase 3, inhibition of proliferation, and cell loss. Irradiation induced γH2AX. In line with clinical observations, individual tumors differed significantly in their susceptibility to temozolomide (0.4%–2.5% apoptosis and 1%–15% cell loss). Conclusion Glioblastoma multiforme slice cultures provide a unique tool to explore susceptibility of individual tumors for specific therapies including heavy ions, thus potentially allowing more personalized treatments plus exploration of mechanisms of (and strategies to overcome) tumor resistance.
(2-Methoxy-1,3-phenylene)diboronic acid

The molecular structure of the title compound, 2-CH3O—C6H3-1,3-[B(OH)2]2 or C7H10B2O5, features two intramolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds of different strengths. One of the boronic acid groups is almost coplanar with the aromatic ring, whereas the second is significantly twisted. Molecules are linked by intermolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, generating infinite chains cross-linked to form a two-dimensional sheet structure aligned parallel to the (01) plane.