Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliable mapping and partitioning of performance-constrained openCL applications on CPU-GPU MPSoCs

Heterogeneous Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chips (MPSoCs) containing CPU and GPU cores are typically required to execute applications concurrently. Existing approaches exploit applications executing in CPU and GPU cores at the same time taking into account performance and energy consumption for mapping and partitioning. This paper presents a proposal for mapping and partitioning of applications in CPU-GPU MPSoCs taking into account the temperature behavior of the system. We evaluate the temperature profiling to partition the applications between CPU and GPU. The profiling is done by measuring the temperature of the CPU and GPU cores while executing different applications at different partitions. Results shown up to 13% savings of average temperature of the chip while maintaining performance requirements. A lower thermal behavior represents a better long-term reliability (lifetime) of the SoC.
An enhanced window-variant dark channel prior for depth estimation using single foggy image

The dark channel prior is a simple yet efficient way to estimate the scene depth information using one single foggy image. However the prior fails for pixels with low colour saturation. Based on the observation that areas with dramatic colour changes tend to belong to similar depth, a window variation mechanism is proposed in this paper based on the neighbourhood scene complexity and colour saturation rate to achieve an ideal compromise between depth resolution and precision. The proposed method greatly alleviates the intrinsic drawbacks of the original dark channel prior. Experiments show the proposed method produces more accurate depth estimation in most of the scenes than the original prior.
Loneliness and ageing: Ireland, North and South

Loneliness can have a significant impact on the physical and mental health of older people and is of increasing concern for public health says a new report from the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH). The research suggests that approximately 10% of older people are affected by chronic or persistent loneliness. It also finds that loneliness amongst older people may be linked to depression, increased nursing home admission, decreased quality of life and cognitive decline. The report compiled by Brian Harvey and Kathy Walsh for the Ageing Research and Development Division at IPH examines loneliness in particular amongst older people and the policy and service interventions to tackle the issue. It argues that loneliness may be tackled by health and social policies and therefore needs to be addressed in a cross cutting manner to maximise the impact of interventions and services.
Revenue Equivalence of Leveled Commitment Contracts

In automated negotiation systems consisting of selfinterested agents, contracts have traditionally been binding. Leveled commitment contracts--i.e, contracts where each party can decommit by paying a predetermined penalty--were recently shown to improve expected social welfare even if agents recommit insincerely in Nash equilibrium. Such contracts differ based on whether agents have to declare their decommitting decisions sequentially or simultaneously, and whether or not agents have to pay the penalties if both recommit. For a given contract, these protocols lead to different decommitting thresholds and probabilities. However, this paper shows that, surprisingly, each protocol leads to the same expected social welfare when the contract price and penalties are optimized for each protocol. Our derivations allow agents to construct optimal leveled commitment contracts. We also show that such integrative bargaining does not hinder distributive bargaining: the excess can be divided arbitrarily (as long as each agent benefits), e.g. equally, without compromising optimality. Revenue equivalence ceases to hold if agents are not risk neutral. A contract optimization service is offered on the web as part of eMediator, our next generation electronic commerce server.
Using bilingual word-embeddings for multilingual collocation extraction

This paper presents a new strategy for multilingual collocation extraction which takes advantage of parallel corpora to learn bilingual word-embeddings. Monolingual collocation candidates are retrieved using Universal Dependencies, while the distributional models are then applied to search for equivalents of the elements of each collocation in the target languages. The proposed method extracts not only collocation equivalents with direct translation between languages, but also other cases where the collocations in the two languages are not literal translations of each other. Several experiments -evaluating collocations with three syntactic patterns- in English, Spanish, and Portuguese show that our approach can effectively extract large pairs of bilingual equivalents with an average precision of about 90%. Moreover, preliminary results on comparable corpora suggest that the distributional models can be applied for identifying new bilingual collocations in different domains.
CXCR4 Expression on Activated B Cells Is Downregulated by CD63 and IL-21

CXCR4 expression is critical for localization of centroblasts in the dark zone of germinal centers (GCs), and centrocytes downregulate CXCR4 and thus leave the dark zone to reside in the light zone. However, mechanisms governing CXCR4 downregulation on centrocytes are not known. In this study, we show that the amount of intracellular CXCR4 in centroblasts was similar to that in centrocytes, suggesting differential control of CXCR4 protein expression in these GC B cells. Restimulation of activated B cells with IL-21, which is a major cytokine produced by T follicular helper cells, accelerated CXCR4 internalization by inducing endocytosis-related GRK6 expression. Although CXCR4 expression was downregulated on GC B cells by IL-21 stimulation, CXCR4low centrocytes developed in the spleens of IL-21R–deficient mice, suggesting other mechanisms for downregulation. The level of CD63 (which recruits CXCR4 to late endosome in CD4 T cells) in centrocytes was more than that in centroblasts and was strikingly elevated in activated Bcl6-deficient B cells. Bcl6, a transcriptional repressor, was detected on the chromatin of the CD63 gene in resting B cells, therefore CD63 is a molecular target of Bcl6. Downregulation of CD63 mRNA in activated Bcl6-deficient B cells by small interfering RNA upregulated CXCR4 expression on the B cells. Furthermore, addition of Bcl6 inhibitor to activated B cell cultures increased CD63 mRNA expression in (and downregulated CXCR4 expression on) those activated B cells. Thus, CXCR4 can be downregulated on activated B cells by IL-21–induced endocytosis and CD63-mediated endosomal recruitment, and these mechanisms may contribute to downregulation of CXCR4 on centrocytes.
A parallel algorithm for nonlinear multi-commodity network flow problem

In this paper, we propose a method to solve the Nonlinear Multicommodity Network Flow (NMNF) Problem. We have combined this method with a projected-Jacobi (PJ) method and a duality based method possessing decomposition effects. With the decomposition, our method can be parallel processed and is computationally efficient. We have tested our method on several examples of NMNF problem and obtained some successful results.
Complex Regulation of the Bacillus subtilis Aconitase Gene

ABSTRACT The roles of the CcpC, CodY, and AbrB proteins in regulation of the Bacillus subtilis aconitase (citB) gene were found to be distinct and to vary with the conditions and phase of growth. CcpC, a citrate-inhibited repressor that is the primary factor regulating citB expression in minimal-glucose-glutamine medium, also contributed to repression of citB during exponential-phase growth in broth medium. A null mutation in codY had no effect on citB expression during growth in minimal medium even when combined with ccpC and abrB mutations. However, a codY mutation slightly relieved repression during exponential growth in broth medium and completely derepressed citB expression when combined with a ccpC mutation. An abrB mutation led to decreased expression of citB during stationary phase in both broth and minimal medium. All three proteins bound in vitro to specific and partially overlapping sites within the citB regulatory region. Interaction of CcpC and CodY with the citB promoter region was partially competitive.
Young women's experiences of dating abuse: A multi-method analysis of the relationships between depression and suicidal ideation, risky behaviors, and abuse in dating relationships

Author(s): Burton, Candace Windham | Advisor(s): Humphreys, Janice C | Abstract: A significant percentage of adolescents involved in dating relationships experience dating abuse. Adolescent dating abuse has been linked to diverse health-related outcomes including depression, risky behavior, and suicidal ideation. Little literature has yet examined the effects of adolescent dating abuse on young women's health in adulthood. The purpose of this study was to develop better understanding of the experiences and health consequences of abusive dating relationships among young women. Specific aims were to discover how young women define and describe abuse in adolescent dating relationships, explore the occurrence of depression and suicidal ideation as outcomes among young women who experienced such abuse, and explore engagement in risky behaviors concurrent with and as outcomes among young women who experienced adolescent dating abuse. Data were collected via questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Questionnaires were completed by 100 community-based women, ages 19 to 35, who self-reported an experience of adolescent dating abuse. Ten of these women also completed interviews with the primary investigator. Participants reported a variety of abusive behaviors in their adolescent dating relationships. The average length of the abusive relationship was 36 months, and participants were between the ages of 11 and 20 at the time of the relationship. Threatening and emotionally or verbally abusive behavior by the partner were most often reported. All participants reported fear of their partner at some time during the relationship. As adults, participants rated their health an average of 8.15 out of 10. Depression was common however, with 41% reporting moderate to severe depressive symptoms. Participants also described a variety of ways they felt the experience of adolescent dating abuse had affected them, including influencing self-image or self-concept, instilling fear that something could happen to them or their children, and causing them to question relationships with others. The results of this study demonstrate the complex nature of adolescent dating abuse and its potential to affect adult health and wellbeing. This study also demonstrates the fullness of lifetime risks that may be associated with adolescent dating abuse. Seeking ways to alleviate this risk is an important task for those practicing with adolescent and young adult populations.
Gene Expression in the Spinal Cord in Female Lewis Rats with Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis Induced with Myelin Basic Protein

Background Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the best available model of multiple sclerosis, can be induced in different animal strains using immunization with central nervous system antigens. EAE is associated with inflammation and demyelination of the nervous system. Micro-array can be used to investigate gene expression and biological pathways that are altered during disease. There are few studies of the changes in gene expression in EAE, and these have mostly been done in a chronic mouse EAE model. EAE induced in the Lewis with myelin basic protein (MBP-EAE) is well characterised, making it an ideal candidate for the analysis of gene expression in this disease model. Methodology/Principal Findings MBP-EAE was induced in female Lewis rats by inoculation with MBP and adjuvants. Total RNA was extracted from the spinal cords and used for micro-array analysis using AffimetrixGeneChip Rat Exon 1.0 ST Arrays. Gene expression in the spinal cords was compared between healthy female rats and female rats with MBP-EAE. Gene expression in the spinal cord of rats with MBP-EAE differed from that in the spinal cord of normal rats, and there was regulation of pathways involved with immune function and nervous system function. For selected genes the change in expression was confirmed with real-time PCR. Conclusions/Significance EAE leads to modulation of gene expression in the spinal cord. We have identified the genes that are most significantly regulated in MBP-EAE in the Lewis rat and produced a profile of gene expression in the spinal cord at the peak of disease.
Improvements on Hsiang and Shih's Remote User Authentication Scheme Using Smart Cards

Hsiang and Shih discovered that Yoon et al.’s user authentication scheme was vulnerable to parallel session attack, impersonation attack, and offline password guessing attack. They proposed an improved scheme to prevent these attacks. Hsiang and Shih’s scheme is still susceptible to offline password guessing attack and server impersonation attack. In this paper, we demonstrate how their scheme can be compromised and then propose an improved scheme based on the Rabin cryptosystem to overcome the weaknesses. Furthermore, we discuss the reason why we should use an asymmetric encryption algorithm to secure a password-based remote user authentication scheme using smart cards. We formally prove the security of our proposed scheme using the BAN logic. key words: Network-level security and protection, authentication, security, password
Spaced Repetition and Mnemonics Enable Recall of Multiple Strong Passwords

We report on a user study that provides evidence that spaced repetition and a specific mnemonic technique enable users to successfully recall multiple strong passwords over time. Remote research participants were asked to memorize 4 Person-Action-Object (PAO) stories where they chose a famous person from a drop-down list and were given machine-generated random action-object pairs. Users were also shown a photo of a scene and asked to imagine the PAO story taking place in the scene (e.g., Bill Gates---swallowing---bike on a beach). Subsequently, they were asked to recall the action-object pairs when prompted with the associated scene-person pairs following a spaced repetition schedule over a period of 127+ days. While we evaluated several spaced repetition schedules, the best results were obtained when users initially returned after 12 hours and then in $1.5\times$ increasing intervals: 77% of the participants successfully recalled all 4 stories in 10 tests over a period of 158 days. Much of the forgetting happened in the first test period (12 hours): 89% of participants who remembered their stories during the first test period successfully remembered them in every subsequent round. These findings, coupled with recent results on naturally rehearsing password schemes, suggest that 4 PAO stories could be used to create usable and strong passwords for 14 sensitive accounts following this spaced repetition schedule, possibly with a few extra upfront rehearsals. In addition, we find that there is an interference effect across multiple PAO stories: the recall rate of 100% (resp. 90%) for participants who were asked to memorize 1 PAO story (resp. 2 PAO stories) is significantly better than the recall rate for participants who were asked to memorize 4 PAO stories. These findings yield concrete advice for improving constructions of password management schemes and future user studies.
An Evaluation of Family‐centered Care in a Level III NICU

Family-centered care is critical to successful experiences for infants and their families in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This article describes a retrospective evaluation survey of family-centered practices in an urban, Level III NICU. Evaluation questions focused on parent satisfaction with unit practices in 4 areas: (a) NICU environment, (b) caregiving practices, (c) communication opportunities, and (d) relationships with nursing staff. Quantitative and qualitative data indicated overall parent satisfaction along with suggestions for improvement of unit practices. Specifically, the need for redesign of the NICU environment (eg, increased space at infant's bedside), caregiving practices (eg, increased hands-on practice), communication opportunities (eg, convenient times for care conferences), and relationships with nursing staff (eg, development of parent-professional relationships) are highlighted as avenues for improving NICU practices. Recommendations for family-centered practices are provided.
Iterative CT shading correction with no prior information

Shading artifacts in CT images are caused by scatter contamination, beam-hardening effect and other non-ideal imaging conditions. The purpose of this study is to propose a novel and general correction framework to eliminate low-frequency shading artifacts in CT images (e.g. cone-beam CT, low-kVp CT) without relying on prior information. The method is based on the general knowledge of the relatively uniform CT number distribution in one tissue component. The CT image is first segmented to construct a template image where each structure is filled with the same CT number of a specific tissue type. Then, by subtracting the ideal template from the CT image, the residual image from various error sources are generated. Since forward projection is an integration process, non-continuous shading artifacts in the image become continuous signals in a line integral. Thus, the residual image is forward projected and its line integral is low-pass filtered in order to estimate the error that causes shading artifacts. A compensation map is reconstructed from the filtered line integral error using a standard FDK algorithm and added back to the original image for shading correction. As the segmented image does not accurately depict a shaded CT image, the proposed scheme is iterated until the variation of the residual image is minimized. The proposed method is evaluated using cone-beam CT images of a Catphan©600 phantom and a pelvis patient, and low-kVp CT angiography images for carotid artery assessment. Compared with the CT image without correction, the proposed method reduces the overall CT number error from over 200 HU to be less than 30 HU and increases the spatial uniformity by a factor of 1.5. Low-contrast object is faithfully retained after the proposed correction. An effective iterative algorithm for shading correction in CT imaging is proposed that is only assisted by general anatomical information without relying on prior knowledge. The proposed method is thus practical and attractive as a general solution to CT shading correction.
Multipath effect on false peaks in covariance based MIMO radar beampattern design

In a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) radar unlike conventional phased array radar, we can choose freely between the probing signals transmitted via its antennas to maximize the transmitted power around specific target locations or to approximate a desire beam-pattern in different manners that many papers have taken into consideration so far. In an operational radar or communication environment, one of the usual phenomenon that happens is multipath. In this paper we'd like to take this effect into consideration and show that how this effect can influence our beam-pattern in a covariance based MIMO radar beam-forming. We will show that multipath can change beam-pattern peak direction, increase side-lobe level and either produce false peaks in our desire beam-pattern. MATLAB software is being employed for simulations.
Framework for online simulation of soft robots with optimization-based inverse model

Soft robotics is an emerging field of robotics which requires computer-aided tools to simulate soft robots and provide models for their control. Until now, no unified software framework covering the different aspects exists. In this paper, we present such a framework from its theoretical foundations up to its implementation on top of SOFA, an open-source framework for deformable online simulation. The framework relies on continuum mechanics for modeling the robotic parts and boundary conditions like actuators or contacts using a unified representation based on Lagrange multipliers. It enables the digital robot to be simulated in its environment using a direct model. The model can also be inverted online using an optimization-based method which allows to control the physical robots in the task space. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, we present various soft robots scenarios including ones where the robot is interacting with its environment. The software is freely available from https://project.inria. fr/softrobot/
Individual differences in adolescent religiosity in Finland: familial effects are modified by sex and region of residence

Abstract Data from 16-year-old Finnish twin pairs were used to estimate familial effects on religiosity and the modification of those effects by sex and residential region. The sample of 2265 twin boys and 2521 twin girls formed 779 monozygotic and 1614 dizygotic pairs, 785 of the same sex and 829 of opposite sex. We compared religiosity scores of twins living in more rural and traditional northern Finland with those living in the more urban and secular southern region. Girls had higher religiosity scores than did boys, and twins living in northern Finland had higher religiosity scores than those resident in southern Finland. Correlations for monozygotic twins were slightly higher than those for dizygotic twins, and covariance modeling found modest heritability of religiosity [11% (95% CI 0–24) for girls; 22% (95% CI 6–38) for boys], and substantial shared environmental effects [60% (95% CI 49–69) and 45% (95% CI 31–57)] among girls and boys, respectively. The correlation between shared environmental effects in boys and girls was estimated to be 0.84 (95% CI 0.73–0.99). In analyses distinguishing region of residence, girls living in southern Finland were found to have significantly higher unshared environmental effects than girls in northern Finland, while boys living in the urban south appeared to have lower shared environmental effects, and higher additive genetic effects, than boys living in the rural north.
CD28 and CTLA-4 have opposing effects on the response of T cells to stimulation

The importance of the B7/CD28/CTLA-4 molecules has been established in studies of antigen-presenting cell-derived B7 and its interaction with the T cell costimulatory molecule CD28. CTLA-4, a T cell surface glycoprotein that is related to CD28, can also interact with B7-1 and B7-2. However, less is known about the function of CTLA-4, which is expressed at highest levels after activation. We have generated an antibody to CTLA-4 to investigate the consequences of engagement of this molecule in a carefully defined system using highly purified T cells. We show here that the presence of low levels of B7-2 on freshly explanted T cells can partially inhibit T cell proliferation, and this inhibition is mediated by interactions with CTLA-4. Cross-linking of CTLA-4 together with the TCR and CD28 strongly inhibits proliferation and IL-2 secretion by T cells. Finally, results show that CD28 and CTLA- 4 deliver opposing signals that appear to be integrated by the T cell in determining the response to activation. These data strongly suggest that the outcome of T cell antigen receptor stimulation is regulated by CD28 costimulatory signals, as well as inhibitory signals derived from CTLA-4.