Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distributed Cloud Storage Services with FleCS Containers

There are limits to the ability to migrate or deploy applications across geographically distributed/loosely coupled cloud resources, requiring substantial data movement and/or uniformly visible and accessible storage services across such distributed infrastructure. To address these issues, we propose and explore the utility of FleCS – an approach for providing FLExible Cloud Storage services in distributed systems. FleCS provides storage containers as a cloud-level abstraction that uniquely identifies a subset of storage resources and their associated attributes. Attributes determine certain container properties, including those concerning data replication and consistency, thereby creating opportunities to pay those costs only for the state/data which require them. FleCS exports to cloud applications an object-based storage API that allows them to request the ‘right’ types of storage, and to correspondingly group/classify their data. Sample uses go beyond the established notions of application-provided or derived hints to classify the ‘hotness/coldness’ of data and/or to provide better energyefficient storage services, to also include applicationspecific notions of data consistency and update strategies. FleCS and several types of storage containers are realized for a prototype platform consisting of groups of nodes, virtualized with the Xen hypervisor, with distinct storage targets, each managed by a separate NFS server. Evaluations use benchmarks based on popular cloud applications. A future target platform for evaluation is a distributed OpenCirrus cloud infrastructure spanning multiple data centers.
Daam2 driven degradation of VHL promotes gliomagenesis

Von Hippel-Landau (VHL) protein is a potent tumor suppressor regulating numerous pathways that drive cancer, but mutations in VHL are restricted to limited subsets of malignancies. Here we identified a novel mechanism for VHL suppression in tumors that do not have inactivating mutations. Using developmental processes to uncover new pathways contributing to tumorigenesis, we found that Daam2 promotes glioma formation. Protein expression screening identified an inverse correlation between Daam2 and VHL expression across a host of cancers, including glioma. These in silico insights guided corroborating functional studies, which revealed that Daam2 promotes tumorigenesis by suppressing VHL expression. Furthermore, biochemical analyses demonstrate that Daam2 associates with VHL and facilitates its ubiquitination and degradation. Together, these studies are the first to define an upstream mechanism regulating VHL suppression in cancer and describe the role of Daam2 in tumorigenesis. Statement of Significance We found that the glial developmental factor Daam2 promotes glioma tumorigenesis by suppressing VHL expression. Our studies show, for the first time, a regulatory mechanism that operates upstream of VHL in cancer and provides an explanation for how VHL expression is extinguished in tumors that do not have inactivating mutations.
Dynamic Compilation Framework with DVS for Reducing Energy Consumption in Embedded Processors

Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) is an effective technique for reducing the energy consumption in embedded systems. There are several advantages using DVS technique into compiler framework. This paper present a framework for reducing energy consumption in embedded processors using the dynamic compiler collaborate with DVS technique. Two algorithms are implemented in this framework, and the framework is implemented using the Intel PIN systems and is deployed in a real hardware platform. Experimental results based on the software and hardware platform, show that significant energy saving are achieved while performance loss less than 5%.
Discrimination of taste qualities among mouse fungiform taste bud cells

Multiple lines of evidence from molecular studies indicate that individual taste qualities are encoded by distinct taste receptor cells. In contrast, many physiological studies have found that a significant proportion of taste cells respond to multiple taste qualities. To reconcile this apparent discrepancy and to identify taste cells that underlie each taste quality, we investigated taste responses of individual mouse fungiform taste cells that express gustducin or GAD67, markers for specific types of taste cells. Type II taste cells respond to sweet, bitter or umami tastants, express taste receptors, gustducin and other transduction components. Type III cells possess putative sour taste receptors, and have well elaborated conventional synapses. Consistent with these findings we found that gustducin‐expressing Type II taste cells responded best to sweet (25/49), bitter (20/49) or umami (4/49) stimuli, while all GAD67 (Type III) taste cells examined (44/44) responded to sour stimuli and a portion of them showed multiple taste sensitivities, suggesting discrimination of each taste quality among taste bud cells. These results were largely consistent with those previously reported with circumvallate papillae taste cells. Bitter‐best taste cells responded to multiple bitter compounds such as quinine, denatonium and cyclohexamide. Three sour compounds, HCl, acetic acid and citric acid, elicited responses in sour‐best taste cells. These results suggest that taste cells may be capable of recognizing multiple taste compounds that elicit similar taste sensation. We did not find any NaCl‐best cells among the gustducin and GAD67 taste cells, raising the possibility that salt sensitive taste cells comprise a different population.
Estimation of energy balance at the individual and herd level using blood and milk traits in high-yielding dairy cows.

This study aimed to estimate individual and herd-level energy balance (EB) using blood and milk traits in 90 multiparous high-yielding Holstein cows, held on a research farm, from wk 1 to 10 postpartum (p.p.) and to investigate the precision of prediction with successively decreased data sets simulating smaller herd sizes and with pooled samples. Dry matter intake, milk yield, and BW were measured daily from parturition through wk 10 p.p. Milk composition was determined 4 times per week, and milk acetone was measured weekly. Blood samples for the determination of metabolites, hormones, electrolytes, and enzyme activities were taken weekly from wk 1 to 10 p.p. between 0730 and 0900. Body condition scores and ultrasonic measurements of backfat thickness and fat depth in the pelvic area were evaluated in wk 1, 4, and 8 p.p. Concentrations of glucose, cholesterol, urea, insulin, insulin-like growth factor-1, triiodothyronine, and thyroxine (T4) in blood plasma and of lactose and urea in milk were positively correlated with EB, whereas concentrations of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA), creatinine, albumin, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and growth hormone and enzyme activities in blood, and concentrations of fat, protein, fat:lactose ratio, and acetone in milk were negatively correlated with EB. Leptin concentration was not correlated to EB over the first 10 wk p.p. To estimate EB linear mixed-effects, models were developed by backward selection procedures. The most informative traits for estimation of EB were the fat:lactose ratio in milk and NEFA and T4 concentrations in blood. The precision of estimation of EB in individual cows was low. Using blood in addition to milk traits did not result in higher precision of estimation of herd-level EB, and decreasing sample sizes considerably lowered the precision of EB prediction. Estimation of overall mean herd-level EB over the first 10 wk p.p. using pooled samples was precise even with small sample sizes, but does not consider the level of EB in particular weeks. In conclusion, estimation of herd-level EB at individual weeks using milk traits only has practical implication with herd sizes of > or = 100 cows if calving is highly seasonal and of or = 400 cows if calving is uniformly distributed. Using blood in addition to milk traits does not improve precision of estimation of herd-level EB, regardless of sample size.
U-Processes and Preference Learning

Abstract Preference learning has caused great attention in machining learning. In this letter we propose a learning framework for pairwise loss based on empirical risk minimization of U-processes via Rademacher complexity. We first establish a uniform version of Bernstein inequality of U-processes of degree 2 via the entropy methods. Then we estimate the bound of the excess risk by using the Bernstein inequality and peeling skills. Finally, we apply the excess risk bound to the pairwise preference and derive the convergence rates of pairwise preference learning algorithms with squared loss and indicator loss by using the empirical risk minimization with respect to U-processes.
Effect of calcium, magnesium, and zinc on ticarcillin and tobramycin alone and in combination against Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Correlation between in vitro and in vivo test results for synergy between carboxypenicillins and aminoglycosides against Pseudomonas aeruginosa is poor. Although the divalent cation content of culture media is known to affect aminoglycoside susceptibility testing for P. aeruginosa, this effect of divalent cations has not been examined for synergy testing of carboxypenicillin-aminoglycoside interaction against P. aeruginosa. The minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of tobramycin and ticarcillin and the interaction of these drugs in combination were studied by a microtitration method for 36 strains of P. aeruginosa in Mueller-Hinton broth with varying supplements of calcium, magnesium, and zinc. The supplementation of Mueller-Hinton broth to 50 or 100 mg of calcium per liter had a significant effect in increasing the tobramycin MIC (P less than 0.01), as well as decreasing the degree of synergy between ticarcillin and tobramycin (P less than 0.01). Supplementation to 20 mg of magnesium per liter, 1.0 mg of zinc per liter, or both did not significantly affect tobramycin MIC or the interaction of tobramycin and ticarcillin. Supplementation to 50 or 100 mg of calcium per liter rendered any additional effect of magnesium and zinc on aminoglycoside MIC and aminoglycoside-carboxypenicillin interaction negligible. If these results for ticarcillin and tobramycin are confirmed for other carboxypenicillins and aminoglycosides, then the Mueller-Hinton broth used for P. aeruginosa aminoglycoside susceptibility and synergy testing may need to be supplemented only with calcium at a concentration of 50 mg/liter.
Achieving high-bandwidth peer-to-peer file distribution

Commercial entities have started using peer-to-peer (P2P) algorithms for file distribution. For example, Sub Pop Records and Blizzard Entertainment use BitTorrent [2] to distribute large files to their clients. Given that last-mile bandwidths to home users are increasing rapidly, a P2P approach is perhaps the only viable solution to avoid a bottleneck at the servers. Furthermore, the fact that P2P algorithms exploit the bandwidth available to the clients and reduces the provisioning costs at the server, makes P2P even more attractive.
Full duplicate candidate pruning for frequent connected subgraph mining

Support calculation and duplicate detection are the most challenging and unavoidable subtasks in frequent connected subgraph (FCS) mining. The most successful FCS mining algorithms have focused on optimizing these subtasks since the existing solutions for both subtasks have high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose two novel properties that allow removing all duplicate candidates before support calculation. Besides, we introduce a fast support calculation strategy based on embedding structures. Both properties and the new embedding structure are used for designing two new algorithms: gdFil for mining all FCSs; and gdClosed for mining all closed FCSs. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithms get the best performance in comparison with other well known algorithms.
Rate Adaptation for Secure HARQ Protocols

This paper investigates the incremental-redundancy hybrid-automatic repeat request (IR-HARQ) transmission over independent block-fading channels in the presence of an eavesdropper, where the secrecy of the transmission is ensured via introduction of dummy messages. Since the encoder only knows the statistics of the channel state, the secrecy and the reliability are defined in a probabilistic framework. Unlike previous works on this subject, we design a coding strategy tailored to IR-HARQ by splitting the dummy-message rate over several rate parameters. These additional degrees of freedom improve the match between the dummy-message rates and the realizations of the eavesdropper channels. We evaluate the performance in terms of secrecy outage probability, connection outage probability, and throughput and compare it with the benchmark paper by Tang et al. Numerical examples illustrate that, comparing to existing alternatives, splitting of the dummy-message rate provides higher throughput and lower expected duration/average delay.
Time-dependent Ionization in Radiatively Cooling Gas

We present new computations of the equilibrium and nonequilibrium cooling efficiencies and ionization states for low-density radiatively cooling gas containing the elements H, He, C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe. We present results for gas temperatures between 104 and 108 K, assuming dust-free and optically thin conditions, and no external radiation. For nonequilibrium cooling we solve the coupled time-dependent ionization and energy loss equations for a radiating gas cooling from an initially hot, ≳5 × 106 K, equilibrium state, down to 104 K. We present results for heavy element compositions ranging from 10-3 to 2 times the elemental abundances in the Sun. We consider gas cooling at constant density (isochoric) and at constant pressure (isobaric). We calculate the critical column densities and temperatures at which radiatively cooling clouds make the dynamical transition from isobaric to isochoric evolution. We construct ion ratio diagnostics for the temperature and metallicity in radiatively cooling gas. We provide numerical estimates for the maximal cloud column densities for which the gas remains optically thin to the cooling radiation. We present our computational results in convenient online figures and tables.
Investigation of three-dimensional granular stresses in pyramidal container after filling

The discrete element simulation was performed to evaluate granular stresses in pyramidal container after the filling. The 3D stress fields were obtained on the basis of a micromechanical approach by calculating inter-particle contact forces and their subsequent homogenization in the given volume of material. Stress distributions were con-firmed the continuum-based indications. According to the results obtained, the stress distribution factor was corrected relying on the influence of three-dimensionality in the frame of the differential slice approach.
Spatial Pattern Analysis of Heavy Metals in Beijing Agricultural Soils Based on Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics

This study explored the spatial pattern of heavy metals in Beijing agricultural soils using Moran’s I statistic of spatial autocorrelation. The global Moran’s I result showed that the spatial dependence of Cr, Ni, Zn, and Hg changed with different spatial weight matrixes, and they had significant and positive global spatial correlations based on distance weight. The spatial dependence of the four metals was scale-dependent on distance, but these scale effects existed within a threshold distance of 13 km, 32 km, 50 km, and 29 km, respectively for Cr, Ni, Zn, and Hg. The maximal spatial positive correlation range was 57 km, 70 km, 57 km, and 55 km for Cr, Ni, Zn, and Hg, respectively and these were not affected by sampling density. Local spatial autocorrelation analysis detected the locations of spatial clusters and spatial outliers and revealed that the pollution of these four metals occurred in significant High-high spatial clusters, Low-high, or even High-low spatial outliers. Thus, three major areas were identified and should be receiving more attention: the first was the northeast region of Beijing, where Cr, Zn, Ni, and Hg had significant increases. The second was the southeast region of Beijing where wastewater irrigation had strongly changed the content of metals, particularly of Cr and Zn, in soils. The third area was the urban fringe around city, where Hg showed a significant increase.
Photodynamically Activated Multifunctional Chitosan Nanoparticles to Disinfect and Improve Structural Stability of Dentin

Bacteria have been confirmed as the main etiological factor for root canal infection as well as for root canal treatment failure. Thus the success of endodontic treatment depends on the complete elimination of bacteria and prevention of bacterial recolonization in the root canal system. The major challenge for conventional root canal disinfection strategies is the ability of bacteria to persist as biofilms within the anatomical complexities of the root canal system. In addition, the alterations in the ultrastructure of dentin tissue results in compromised structural integrity of root dentin leading to higher risk of fracture in root-filled teeth. The objectives of this study are twofold: 1) develop and test functionalized nanoparticles to eliminate biofilm bacteria and, 2) to stabilize and strengthen the dentin organic matrix by crosslinking collagen fibrils in the presence of biopolymeric nanoparticles. A bioactive polymeric nanoparticle functionalized with a photosensitizer may present as a single step treatment to achieve both the objectives. Chitosan a bioactive polymer was used owing to their inherent antibacterial and biocompatible characteristics. Chitosan micro-/nanoparticles were synthesized as well as functionalized with photosensitizer (rose bengal) for photodynamic activation. Bioactive chitosan nanoparticle functionalized with a rose bengal is expected to combine the properties of chitosan i.e., polycationic with higher affinity
Structural Dynamics of Eukaryotic Chromosome Evolution

Large-scale genome sequencing is providing a comprehensive view of the complex evolutionary forces that have shaped the structure of eukaryotic chromosomes. Comparative sequence analyses reveal patterns of apparently random rearrangement interspersed with regions of extraordinarily rapid, localized genome evolution. Numerous subtle rearrangements near centromeres, telomeres, duplications, and interspersed repeats suggest hotspots for eukaryotic chromosome evolution. This localized chromosomal instability may play a role in rapidly evolving lineage-specific gene families and in fostering large-scale changes in gene order. Computational algorithms that take into account these dynamic forces along with traditional models of chromosomal rearrangement show promise for reconstructing the natural history of eukaryotic chromosomes.
Metabolomics in the developing infant

Purpose of review The aim of this review is to update readers on the most recent publications concerning clinical metabolomics in developing infants. Recent findings Only a limited number of neonatal and pediatric metabolomic studies have been published, in comparison to the adult. However, this number of pediatric and neonatal papers is constantly increasing. The latest papers are related to intrauterine growth restricted and small for gestational age neonates, prematurity, mode of delivery, hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, persistent ductus arteriosus, respiratory syndrome and surfactant therapy, cytomegalovirus infection, nephrouropathy, inborn errors of metabolism, pharmametabolomics, and nutrimetabolomics (including study of maternal milk and formula). Also numerous papers have been presented in experimental neonatology. In particular, the fluids most frequently used were as follows: urine, cord blood plasma, but also milk and stools. Each condition or disease presents a specific discriminating set of metabolites, which can be considered like a ‘bar code’. Summary In the near future, improved tools for metabolomic analysis (like simplified ‘dipsticks’ for urine) and its integration with other ‘omics’ will make this technology available in the clinical setting, leading to better or easier clinical decision making. Urinary metabolomics will probably be one of the most used tools in pediatrics and the metabolome will be ‘our world’.
Ads and the city: considering geographic distance goes a long way

Social-networking sites have started to offer tools that suggest "guests" who should be invited to user-defined social events (e.g., birthday parties, networking events). The problem of how to recommend people to events is similar to the more traditional (recommender system) problem of how to recommend events (items) to people (users). Yet, upon Foursquare data of "who visits what" in the city of London, we show that a state-of-the-art recommender system does not perform well -mainly because of data sparsity. To fix this problem, we add domain knowledge to the recommendation process. From the complex system literature in human mobility, we learn two insights: 1) there are special individuals (often called power users) who visit many places; and 2) individuals go to a venue not only because they like it but also because they are close-by. We model these insights into two simple models and learn that: 1) simply recommending power users works better than random but is far from producing the best recommendations; 2) an item-based recommender system produces accurate recommendations; and 3) recommending places that are closest to a user's geographic center of interest produces recommendations that are as accurate as, if not more accurate than, item-based recommender's. This last result has practical implications as it offers guidelines for designing location-based recommender systems and for partly addressing cold-start situations.
The Willingness to Pay for Vaccination against Tick-Borne Encephalitis and Implications for Public Health Policy: Evidence from Sweden

The increasing incidence of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) in Sweden and several other European countries has sparked a discussion about the need for a public vaccination strategy. However, TBE vaccination coverage is incomplete and there is little knowledge about the factors influencing vaccination behavior. Based on a survey of 1,500 randomly selected respondents in Sweden, we estimate vaccination coverage in areas with different TBE risk levels and analyze the role of vaccine price and other factors influencing the demand for vaccination. First, we find that the average rate of TBE vaccination in Sweden is 33% in TBE risk areas and 18% elsewhere. Income, age and risk-related factors such as incidence of TBE in the area of residence, frequency of visits to areas with TBE risk, and experience with tick bites are positively associated with demand for TBE vaccine. Next, using contingent valuation methodology, we estimate the willingness to pay for TBE vaccination among the unvaccinated respondents and the effect of a possible subsidy. Among the unvaccinated respondents in TBE risk areas, we estimate the mean willingness to pay for the recommended three doses of TBE vaccine to be 465 SEK (approximately 46 euros or 40% of the current market price). We project that a subsidy making TBE vaccines free of charge could increase the vaccination rate in TBE risk areas to around 78%, with a larger effect on low-income households, whose current vaccination rate is only 15% in risk areas. However, price is not the only factor affecting demand. We find significant effects on vaccination behavior associated with trust in vaccine recommendations, perceptions about tick bite-related health risks and knowledge about ticks and tick-borne diseases. Hence, increasing knowledge and trust, as well as ease of access to vaccinations, can also be important measures for public health agencies that want to increase the vaccination rate.